In a recent Security Week article, Justin Fier holds forth on a topic that is at once both incredible and credible. The topic is data exfiltration, and the perspective the article casts makes it a worthy read. Most consumers and laypeople in the commercial streams of the Internet think data breaches occur with great haste, like Madge in accounting steps away from her desk for a moment and hackers move all the data to a thumb drive before she gets back with a cup of coffee and a problem. Though the thought of Tom Cruise dropping from the ceiling with a CD-ROM is good cinema, the reality is far more boring and difficult to catch.

Fier offers some charts to delineate the timeline for some recent hacks, with names you know and details you might not. He accounts for the migration of that data in terms of days and weeks, not minutes. Like the slow drip from a tiny hole in the bilge, the ship is sunk before the folks with the view even know what’s happening. With data, surely somebody notices that it’s grown legs over time, but that is not always the case.

A Possible Solution

To keep up with the bad guys who are, in turn, trying to keep up with the good guys, Fier looks at emerging technologies like AI, methods and capabilities that grow and evolve alongside the assets they protect.

While AI might be the panacea we seek, ICS offers some battle-tested HI, or human intelligence. Call today and let us in the door, before your data starts a slow waltz out the door.