Heroes in Business - Experian Identity Report with Michael Bruemmer, The Challenge of Stopping Data Breaches

Episode Date: January 29, 2023

Experian Identity Report with Michael Bruemmer, discusses The Challenge of Stopping Data Breaches. Bruemmer leads the Global Data Breach Resolution Group for Experian and serves as the Vice President of Consumer Protection, interviewed by David Cogan of the Heroes Show and founder of Eliances entrepreneur community.  

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups, where our heroes in business align. Now, here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. I gotta tell you, I am super excited because we have our weekly feature called the Experian Identity Report. I mean, let's face it, managing one's personal identity is complicated on its own. At the business enterprise level, managing customer identities in a strategic and secure way and at a scale across countless interactions is very complicated and it's only going to get more complex in the future from what I understand. That's why we are bringing you

these special reports that will include interviews with the world's leading experts about the game changing impact of identity and the need to use reliable data to make confident decisions that safely accelerate customer engagement. So please welcome to the show, Michael Bremer. He leads the global data breach resolution for Experian and serves as the vice president of consumer protection. So at the end, make sure that you go to Experian.com forward slash data breach. So Michael, welcome to the show and thank you for being here today. Thank you, David, and happy holidays. Yes, you too. So what were the biggest cybersecurity threats to companies this year?

I imagine there were so many, but maybe you could share with us the biggest ones. Sure. I have my top five list. And some of these you've read about as a consumer or heard about from a business perspective. Top of the list is malware or ransomware. is malware or ransomware. Second, zero-day attacks. And zero-day attacks just means it's a cyber threat that the criminals are exercising for the first time. Remote code extension. So the hackers are using code that can be controlled remotely once they get inside your systems. Social engineering, which is always tough around the holidays with online e-commerce, as well as scams. And then finally, the old phishing or smishing. This is a text or an email that's sent to you, so you click on the link. Well, why are organizations still unable to

stop a data breach? Well, we've said for a while that the hackers continue to evade detection. And for the first time, we've gone over 200 days to the time of detection and then an organization will find a data breach. And beyond that, it takes 75 days to find out that they actually can resolve the issue. This is the longest it's been. So the hackers just keep out running the people trying to protect their businesses, particularly the entrepreneurs. Amazing. Now, I think it's important to know is how does Experian help organizations that have suffered a data breach? I mean, the numbers must just go through the roof as far as how many have suffered a data breach. So share that, please.

Sure. Well, we've been doing it since 2003 and we've serviced over 60,000 data breaches. And in 2022, we'll have serviced almost 5,000. What we do is we provide the legally required notification to consumers if an organization has had a data breach. We'll provide 800 number for people to call in for frequently asked questions

or enroll if they need assistance and don't want to do that online. And then finally, we actually provide our Identity Works identity theft protection product. Well, that's great. I mean, this I want to, I mean, this is important. I mean, this is critical information. It affects everybody. I mean, that's the thing. It doesn't discriminate. It's out there. So again, welcome to the show, Michael Bremer. That's who we have with us today. Vice President of Consumer Protection with a Global Data Breach Resolution Group at Experian. You know he's busy. Experian.com forward slash data breach

is where you can go ahead and make sure you go to that link because why? You're watching and listening to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. To see past episodes, you can go ahead and go to alliances.com and click on the radio portion button. And you'll also find many other incredible

interviews with experience so again appreciate you being here today um what are the most important steps though now that companies could take to shore up their cyber security i have i have really three things that every company whether you're a single family business, whether you're a large multinational, these steps apply to you. First, it's job-specific security and privacy training, because it's not just the security guys that need to protect you, but you need to protect yourself and be educated on what are the threats. protect yourself and be educated on what are the threats. Second, it's zero trust in verify, meaning that you're not trusting anyone or any device to come into your network unless you have actually authorized it and then verified every time it comes in. And this applies again to small

businesses all the way up to large multinationals. And finally, I like a term cyber resilience. And we're using this particularly in our 2023 predictions because every company is going to have some type of security event. But it's how quickly you can recover and how much resilience you have. If you get attacked or have a security event, you can recover and continue servicing your customers. I mean, that's great. And I appreciate you again, you sharing that. So what are some of the predictions

in the Experian Data Breach Industry forecast for next year? I had talked earlier, David, on the podcast about how we think the hackers are staying ahead. But I like a couple other ones that we're talking about. The first one is the cyber attacks are going to rain down from space. Depending on which numbers you believe, there's between four and 7,000 satellites that are up in space, and half of them are either out of service, decommissioned, or inactive. And two years ago at a conference in Las Vegas called DEF CON, there was a hacker with $300 worth of TV equipment that actually was able to intercept a Fortune 100 company's internet

traffic from a satellite using that. So I'm not saying that the International Space Station is going to come crashing down, but we think that satellites and their information could be intercepted or the orbits changed. The other big prediction is around the metaverse. In two years, we predict that every human is going to spend about an hour in the metaverse playing around. You have to provide personalized ID, any information, payment information, as well as device ID to just get into the metaverse. But it's the worst combination possible because you're there having fun. You've given up information and it's very unregulated. You're there having fun. You've given up information and it's very unregulated.

Finally, the other one that I highlight is is actually already sort of taking place. And this is the second battlefield time in cyberspace, launching denial service attacks, taking down infrastructure, and creating havoc without ever having boots touch the ground. Absolutely amazing. Well, Michael, you help companies identify the steps to shore up their cybersecurity. That's a hero. This has been the Experian Identity Report with Michael Bremer, Vice President of Consumer Protection at Experian on the Alliance's Hero Show. Make sure that you go to Experian.com forward slash data breach to learn more. This has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Show and make sure you check out alliances.com.