The World Can Be a Scary Place.
Real Stories from Real Clients (shared with permission)
State Interference
Early in the pandemic most businesses enthusiastically embraced Zoom as an easy to implement connectivity / collaboration tool. Businesses were easily able to connect their employees together, hold meetings, and discuss their operations. Unfortunately, Zoom had a number of failings that placed many businesses at risk. The biggest risk was that all of Zoom’s servers were based in China. Throughout the pandemic numerous cases emerged where the Chinese government actively interfered with Zoom meetings by banning individuals that support the Chinese government or even banning groups outright. China’s lawful access laws provided the Chinese government with access to every user’s business, allowing them to learn about those business’ IP, client lists, and financial information.
For one of our clients simply having an employee who had spoken out about China's human rights issues was enough to result in their Zoom account being deleted. Fortunately, Shadowburst Solutions had hardened their networks a year earlier and moved sensitive information to an air-gapped system.
The Lesson: China is well known to use stolen IP to skip costly R&D efforts and jump directly into the marketing of lower cost knockoff products. China is also well known to use stolen financial information to undercut competitors in contract negotiations.
You Can Safely Work From Anywhere. It Just Requires Planning
In June 2021 a new client approached Shadowburst Solutions to create a flexible, work - from - home security solution following a reported breach. An employee of the client had been working from home since the start of the pandemic but had travelled to Spain in February 2021 to visit family. While in Spain they connected to their work profile via an open access point at the AirBNB rental they were staying at.
Shortly after they started working from the AirBNB the company found some suspicious purchases being made on their company credit card. The bank was able to freeze those transactions. Subsequent analysis of the employee’s laptop by Shadowburst Solutions found that thieves had targeted the open wifi and used that access point to compromise the employee’s device. In this case that compromise was limited to scanning for financial information (such as the corporate credit card). No other information was taken; however, a full review of the company’s security was required.
Shadowburst Solutions designed new policies and security infrastructure that were immediately implemented. This included new passwords for every user, the introduction of YUBIKEY and stronger two factor identification, mandatory VPN usage (especially while travelling), and more.
Today, more of the client’s employees have started working while travelling and there have been no repeat breaches.