Author: Robert Broxup

It is almost impossible to pick up a newspaper without finding some report on cyber threats and data breaches. Estimates of skill shortages are published as businesses across the globe race to improve security and reduce risk exposure. IT security has become a considerable part of the budget and is expected to increase. Back-office operations have become far too complicated, too many systems which perform the same function within the business and too many exceptions which make business rules unnecessarily complicated.

Significant security benefits are achievable by delivering a programme of application consolidation and business streamlining. Still, it is necessary to give serious consideration needs to the causes of software proliferation as without eliminating the causes, software systems will continue to multiply undermining all the efforts and benefits. Here are some of the many reasons:

• Lack of a standard set of infrastructure, operating system and database technology – having such a standard serves as a benchmark for evaluating new software systems, by rejecting solutions which don’t fit the target environment.

• Lack of an authorised list of software – without a standard approach, different people, teams or departments will inevitably make decisions on what software they will use.

• Users permitted to download and install the software – even if the individual user doesn’t have permission directly when combined with the lack of a standard, they will be able to ask someone in the IT department to install the software, and the request is unlikely to be rejected. Choice of software could be motivated by personal preference such as a lack of understanding of one product and being an expert in another.

• The IT implications of Mergers and Acquisitions – IT seldom considered before reaching an agreement. Although the nature of the businesses could be identical, the infrastructure, operating systems, databases and software systems could be completely different.

• Purchasing a new system without fully understanding the dependencies and implications can lead to the introduction of new underlying technologies to the business. For example, a company with 1000 windows servers agrees to purchase a new system which requires Linux, which in turn requires new hardware, new software, new skills and cross-system integration. In a short space of time, the IT environment becomes significantly more complicated. The same can apply to other combinations such as if an estate made up of Microsoft SQL Server databases, inherits or purchases a new system which requires Oracle.

It will always be possible for someone to justify an exception to any standards which are defined whether that be for personal preference reasons, experience or lack thereof, or anything relating to costs. The important point which cannot be over-emphasised is that the greater the diversity of hardware and software, the greater the overall running cost, the number of problems experienced will be much higher. IT becomes more complicated and eventually chaotic.

With this increased complexity and chaos, is an increased requirement to improve security. The more systems there are, the greater the security requirement; the more systems need to patching, more systems need auditing, and more vulnerabilities need patching. In other words, the attack surface becomes much more extensive. Essentially the focus here is reducing the attack surface area through streamlining the use of software systems. Henry Ford said that a customer could have a car painted any colour they wanted as long as it was black. Although he said this in jest, and that he manufactured in many different colours, his comments accurately illustrated the point that production is fast and efficient when streamlined with repeatable processes. Here we are talking about streamlining software and its positive impact on security and reduction in exposure to risks.

With an ever-increasing number of websites and a seemingly comparable increase in the level of fraud and other problems with purchases, people need to apply a greater level of judgement over which websites they use and choose to trust with their credit card details. What constitutes site credibility is somewhat subjective. The aim here is to highlight and discuss several obvious issues and ask thought-provoking questions so that you can make your own decisions over what you will accept, tolerate or avoid like the plague.

Consider a simple example of website images that imitate search boxes. Everyone knows what a search box looks like, and how to perform a search, but more and more websites have images that look like search boxes and any attempt to use them results in completely unrelated content which opens in different windows. There are many other variations on this same theme where the site deviates from standard website behaviour to create an outcome to its users’ detriment. This behaviour is deceptive, and you should leave the website.

• Generally speaking, how people behave some of the time is how people behave all of the time. A deceptive website design demonstrates the values of the people who built it, and the people who run the business behind it.

• Adverts are a popular way to monetise websites, and we can forgive website owners for adding one or two adverts that are directly related to their blogs, for example. Websites lose their credibility when the page appears to have more adverts than content; not to mention disguised adverts which appear to be a genuine part of the page content.

• Implementing deceptive means to trick users into clicking on adverts is often a fraud against those paying for adverts on a per click basis. Consider the credibility of the websites advertised when evaluating the credibility of the site you are visiting.

• Intrusive pop-ups are unprofessional, and they give a clear picture of the overall credibility of the site. Website behaviour includes pop-up windows that appear on top of the current page, hidden under the page later when you close your browser or timed to open after a specific amount of reading time on the current site. If people open a webpage, they expect to read the content of the page without being interrupted by unpredictable behaviour.

• An amusing trend with web pages on tablets is the inclusion of an image which makes it look like a speck of dust, or a hair is on the screen. Consequently, cleaning your screen results in the selection of links to new pages; amusing in so much as it shows how far people are willing to go to get people to click on links.

Considering the nature of the site behaviour and the values of the business, this indicates that it is the last place anyone should use their credit card details. Putting that aside, the following are the kind of things you should expect if you choose to make a purchase.

• A pre-selected check box with additional purchase options – by going ahead with your purchase, which may be for a negligible value, you inadvertently make a purchase that you didn’t expect. Essentially it becomes an opt-out purchase

• Terms and conditions that deviate from standard practice – such as a term which states that by making a purchase, you are joining a club and that subsequent payments will be taken from your credit card and added to an online account ready for future purchases

• Automatic continuation of services – payment is made for a specific duration, but automatically renewed without any warning or notification. The customer doesn’t notice until they check their bank/credit card statement.

• Email address and other personal information sold to other businesses leading to an increase in unrelated junk email

Claiming a chargeback against the credit or debit card used to make the purchase is not straight forward in cases where the customer has explicitly given their credit card details. Banks don’t consider this to be credit card fraud and responsibility for the loss remains with the cardholder. Under these conditions, banks tell their customers to contact the vendor. The issue with dealing directly with such vendors is that the values exhibited throughout the customer journey are consistent with customer support model.  Essentially, designed to get people into an undesirable situation, while making it difficult, time-consuming, or expensive to get out.

We have already illustrated that security questions are not secure, but this will continue for some time to come. The problem is that a lot of security questions and answers use immutable facts which are akin to having a never-changing password used in many different places. It is disproportionate, to enforce a password policy of minimum eight characters, mixed upper case and lower case, and including numbers and symbols, then for someone to reset it using your first school, the name of your dog and your mother’s maiden name?

With every data breach, more information about individuals becomes available in the public domain. Combined with information that people are openly providing on social media, results in the answers to the majority of security questions, based on unchangeable historical facts, readily available for use. It is also likely that large quantities of stolen data from multiple sources are already correlated to build a bigger picture of individual people. If this is not already true, it is a safe assumption that it will be in the future. Here are some thoughts on how to adapt:

• The most crucial point is that for the concept of security questions to work, the questions and answers need treatment with the same level of importance as usernames and passwords. Remember that security questions can reset and override the need for passwords or PINs.

• Advice that people should use different passwords for different systems is ubiquitous; however, for security questions to have security value, the same approach needs to be applied. It is daunting to think of having 200 mothers and needing to change them all every 60 days, but it’s not that bad; having one mother and multiple maiden names is sufficient. Also having a mother who was once called ‘Miss Yr66£1&Ld’ is acceptable. It is amusing when asked to confirm this by telephone. What is not funny is it being accepted by phone after giving only the first three characters. Some systems treat the answers to security questions like passwords, and call centre staff must correctly type the answer to access customer data. This approach provided an extra level of security which prevents call centre staff from accessing customer data when the customer is not present on the call.

• Exercising a certain amount of security due diligence when being asked for information is essential and will require a judgement call to be made. What is reasonable and unreasonable is somewhat subjective, and companies should only be requesting the minimum information necessary to fulfil their purpose. Name and address are obvious requirements if you place an online order which needs to be delivered, but you would not expect to be asked for a date of birth when placing an order.

Companies are behind with the idea that someone can have a cat called ‘G8ssJe4£!’. Being asked once to pronounce his name was followed with an explanation that the answer to my security question needed to be factual and could I give the real name so they could update my records. Not having a cat made that close to impossible.

In part 1, we looked at how security questions are generally insecure for several reasons and highlighted some of the challenges that we face to improve security. The next step is to look specifically at suggestions for adapting to what are several broken business processes and inadequate IT solutions. We start with what happens when someone calls you and asks to take you through security questions – ‘What?! You called me!’

If someone calls you and tells you they need to take you through security questions, do not comply. If they are calling you, you should be the one confirming their identity. There are many approaches.

• Tell the caller that you will call them back. Always use a telephone number provided to you in official correspondence or use a publicly available contact telephone number for the company allegedly calling you.

• The caller may attempt to give you a telephone number to call. Never use this number. If the call is fraudulent, then the number provided will also be fraudulent.

• After the call, always make a call to a known number such as a family member or a friend. This action ensures disconnection from the previous telephone call. With some telephone systems, the connection remains active after hanging up. Picking up the phone and dialling a genuine number can result in a continuation of the previous call.

• If you receive a text message asking you to call your bank or another company about an urgent matter, never use the telephone number provided in the text.

• Even if the Caller ID shows up as a genuine number, that you recognise, it is worth following the same process to avoid faked Caller IDs.

There is an assumption that an organisation calling you has exclusivity over making sure they are speaking to the right person. You can test this yourself next time you receive a call by trying to take them through security. When they call you, ask them to confirm the 2nd and 5th digit of your customer number or some other obscure question which the caller would have access to if they were genuine. The point here is not to get them to comply, but to demonstrate that they will not comply. They will, however, try and insist that you comply.

The security is a failing in the way the business set up their processes, and it is so embedded in people’s thinking that this is the way the process works, that fraudsters can step in and mimic the process to obtain access to sensitive information. In recent years we have seen notifications from financial institutions stating, ‘We will never ask you for your PIN’. The next step on this matter would be for corporations to say ‘We will never call you and ask you security questions’.

In part 3, we will look more at security questions and how the entire security model around the use of security questions has a limited shelf life.