Data breaches literally happen all the time. The average is 1 every 39 seconds.
You’ve probably heard about the big deal. A recent breach of a background check company exposed approximately 2.9 billion records, including Social Security numbers and other personal data of millions of Americans. Supreme Court leak reveals intent to overturn landmark decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. All the important details of Apple’s latest iPhone.
The last thing just happened. By the time Apple unveiled its latest iPhone 16 lineup in California, we already knew all the big announcements in advance.
This is a big deal since Apple is notoriously secretive. The company has previously gone to great lengths to track down and punish those who leaked everything from internal memos to hardware updates.
Still, like clockwork, a slew of insider leaks gave us weeks ahead of all the big news, including photos of the new iPhone 16, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max. We also knew all about the most important updates for AirPods and Apple Watch.
Of course, they were all just rumors until Tim Cook actually took the stage at Apple headquarters and made it all semblance of official, but were they true? Really? Or is this just a recent incident of internal corporate information leaks exploding?
“A company as gifted as Apple, a master of messaging, has uncontrollable leaks that it can no longer control.” [event]that’s not ideal,” EchoMark CEO Troy Batterberry said by phone. “It’s damaging and it’s frustrating for everyone on the team who are about to have a great moment that takes the world by storm… It takes the wind out of the sails.”
But here’s the crazy part. Butterberry said such breaches are now more preventable than ever before, adding that they have new technology to prove it. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, why should you care about internal leaks?
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This is why internal information leaks like those at Apple are so threatening.
Sometimes people divulge insider information to “cool it down.” They want to show the world what they know and no one else is doing. We collect views on social media. It “wins friends and influences people.” It makes them feel important. Leakers may believe that divulging trade secrets is in the public interest.
Some do it for even more sinister reasons. Maybe they have an ax to grind against the boss. Or trying to get a job in a contest. Some people do it for money, if they can find someone who will pay them for the information.
“There are people who feel important and want to exert power and control and damage the organization in order to get promoted,” Dr. Deanna D. Caputo explains in a video call.
Dr. Caputo is the lead scientist at MITER, a nonprofit IT and engineering company that investigates internal data breaches from all angles. “The problem is vast and costs us millions of dollars every year to protect our economy, our homeland, and our personal data.”
How does this relate to Apple and us?
Apple is the world’s largest company with a market capitalization of $3.48 trillion. If we can’t keep some of our most sensitive information private, what does that mean for the rest of us whose entire private lives are stored on company servers? Social Security numbers, medical records, finances? It seems like almost everything is leaked these days, including data.
“A breach like this anywhere, especially at a company like Apple, is a huge problem,” agrees Kyle Schlosser, a cybersecurity insider threat management specialist. “If someone were able to remove that data from the environment without a legitimate business purpose, they have an insider problem.”
Insider information theft is one of the biggest problems facing modern businesses, according to a recent report from software security firm Code42.
One wrong moment and an employee can wipe out all of their hard work, putting intellectual property, customers’ personal data, money, and the company’s reputation at risk.
“If you think about it, it may not seem like anyone was physically harmed[by the internal intelligence breach]– the average American can immediately see and understand the threat and fear. It’s not like mass shootings like this one – but this is just as bad in America.” There are different ways to do it,” Dr. Caputo argues. “It may be difficult to see the effects, but everyone deals with the effects of corporate espionage, whether they realize it or not. It even costs your life.”
However, let’s be real here. No one died or lost billions of dollars when someone stole the bombshell of Tim Cook’s big announcement ahead of Apple’s latest press conference. But that’s not the case with corporate insider leaks, say experts working to stem the rise in information theft.
more:Recent Apple updates focus on health technology. Experts think this is a big deal.
Can new technology permanently shore up insider leaks?
I went down the rabbit hole of this problem after meeting with Troy Batterberry of EchoMark about the launch of a new service they call SecureView. But more than a typical product launch, our nearly two-hour conversation kept reminding me of the TV show “The Americans.” (It’s a Cold War spy drama about two Soviet KGB agents posing as an American couple living in Virginia.)
The reality of this whole insider leak business is very “cloak and dagger” and Mr. Batterberry’s correction is, well, mind-boggling.
In a nutshell, this new software is a new combination of AI and machine vision, combined with forensic watermarking and steganography (hiding messages within messages), to create a Make every document as unique and individualized as a fingerprint.
This means that if sensitive or personal information is compromised, companies can quickly and easily trace it back to the source.
Batterberry used one of Tim Cook’s leaked emails to staff in 2021 to tell us how it all works. Without changing the overall meaning of the original message, EchoMark’s AI suggests small changes that result in an almost infinite number of combinations. 435 combinations are possible by editing just 15 simple phrases.Variations of Octillion Message.
That’s a number with 27 zeros.
“Nobody on earth has done what we did,” Butterberry said. “If everyone knows they’re getting their own copy, it’s less likely to get leaked because they know they’re more likely to get caught. We’re telling everyone, ‘Your information The copy is now unique. You have no idea how unique it is. It’s hidden everywhere. It’s like a digital fingerprint scattered throughout your content. If you try to divulge this, you will be caught. ”
When I asked him if he could have prevented the latest Apple news from being leaked, he replied: “I think we’ve been able to, or at least dramatically reduce that trend.”
Although the current focus is on internal information leaks, Butterberry says this next-generation steganography could solve many other growing societal problems caused by AI, such as deepfake videos, misinformation, and other painful hacks. He said he is already conducting tests to see if this is the case.
“What we’re doing is educating people that there are new ways to protect personal information. People don’t even know that something like this is possible. That’s what we’re really pioneering. That’s what we do.”
jennifer jolie He is an Emmy Award-winning consumer technology columnist and on-air contributor to The Today Show. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. To contact her,JJ@Techish.com.
