The World This Week - April 1, 2018

The World This Week.

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. But for the whistle blower - It would have been impossible to believe that a company like Facebook would have allowed itself to be used by such spurious app developers.

In a nutshell – A company called Cambridge Analytica paid nearly $1M to Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan to create an app called ‘thisisyourdigitallife’. The intent of the app was to collect Facebook user profile data and pages liked in the guise of an online personality quiz. The app was able to directly access 270,000 user’s data. Here is the real catch – using this data the app developers were able to access data of 50M users – which they then misused to allegedly influence Donald Trump Victory in 2016. They apparently also influenced several other democracies including India, Argentina, Kenya, Nigeria, The Czech Republic and others.

There have been several data breaches in the recent past – Equifax, Yahoo, Deloitte, NSA, Indian telco giant – Reliance Jio and few more but there is none as damaging as this Facebook fiasco. Facebook itself seems to be under fire with the “#DeleteFacebook” hashtag trending, Mark Zuckerberg has formally apologized but his troubles are far from over. Many governments will be under pressure – political parties will have to answer a lot of questions. You and me – public at large are the helpless victims – what more this borrowed phrase summarizes this point – “If you’re Not Paying for It; you’re the Product”.

Among other major whistle blower new grabbers were the leak of CBSE board exam papers in India and possible fraud / conflict of interest at board room level of India’s ICICI bank.

Yet another data leak - US based Orbitz – a subsidiary of Expedia – has suffered a leak 880,000 credit card numbers putting that many people in risk.

So here’s what we can start doing differently from tomorrow. Be alert and vigilant on what you share on social media, when creating online account – avoid using Facebook to login or authenticate yourself. Don’t believe everything that you see in the social Media – especially WhatsApp. Think before you forward.

Business are equally vulnerable if not more to data thefts. Among the few options that companies have – the prominent one is to safeguard and have controls over PPT – People, Process and Technology. Like they say – never try to make a Matchbox at home – it will not only cost more – it will be a far from a perfect product – Cyber security is similar – In-house is fine for certain areas but for most of the other areas outside help is always better. It will not only cost lesser dollars – it is sure shot to work.