It’s no secret that we, as identity professionals, are the custodians of some of the most crucial information in our enterprises. We hold information about employees and customers in our identity systems in order to deliver them services that range from productivity to entertainment to personal health and wellbeing.
And as professionals, none of us want to build systems that can harm other people. Certainly, none of us want to build systems that can be used to harm ourselves. At the core of our professional code of ethics is the spirit of “do no harm.”
Now it is true that if our identity systems are of value to us and to our employers, then they are of value to attackers.
Who are these attackers?
There are two kinds of attackers: bulk and single data subject attackers; let’s look at both.
Bulk Attackers, as the name implies, want bulk data… they want all the data. Why they want all the data can vary widely. They might be interested in a single vendor’s customers. Or they might be interested in everyone in a region who shares a medical condition or ethnic heritage, or employer. They might be setting up for a later spear phishing attack. They might be putting the pieces together for an ethnic minority oppression campaign or a voter suppression campaign.
On the other hand, Single Data Subject Attackers are only interested in a single data subject. They are focused just one individual. Why? They might want to take control of a celebrity’s mobile phone for the lulz or leak personal photos to the web. They might be interested in dox’ing an adversary. They might want to make an ex-spouse’s life a living hell.
Continue reading A Maturity Model for De-Weaponizing Identity Systems – Part 1