Framing It: 8.6.19
The Week of Cybersecurity
In mid-2017, it was reported that consumer credit reporting agency Equifax leaked data from nearly 150 million Americans. Social security numbers, names, birth dates, addresses, and credit card numbers were leaked all over the Internet. This was called the biggest data leak of all time.
Earlier this summer, Equifax settled with the Federal Trade Commission and a number of class-action lawsuits, ultimately paying $671 Million. Under the settlement, those affected by the data leak can receive either credit monitoring or a $125 cash payment.
Have you filed your claim yet? Don’t bother with the check; although only $31 Million of the $671 Million total is set aside for these small, $125 cash payments. Divide that out, and you’ll realize only 250,000 people could ever receive $125. Now everyone is going to get a check in the mail for a few bucks. The FTC has failed to protect the American public from predatory or incompetent companies.
Continuing with the theme of massive security breaches…
A former Amazon employee has been charged with exfiltrating data from Capital One. Paige Thompson was able to gather data regarding 106 Million Capital One records thanks to an improperly configured AWS server. Thompson put this data up on GitHub, and now Github is being sued.
If there is a common thread between the Equifax and Capital One breaches, it’s not that an evil hacker malevolently stole login information from companies. These companies were incompetent and did not know how to configure their systems. This brings us to our next point: hackers don’t always wear hoodies.
Not All Hackers Wear Hoodies
The most important news in cybersecurity this week comes from OpenIDEO. Stock images of ‘hackers’ and ‘cybersecurity’ are terrible. This news was known by everybody, but OpenIDEO is putting their money where their mouth is: they’ve opened a contest to create new and interesting visuals that convey the idea of cybersecurity.
OpenIDEO is a graphic design group is bemoaning the state of ‘hacker’ and ‘cybersecurity’ visuals. Yes, the ubiquitous stock images of hoodies and balaclavas protecting hackers from a torrent of precipitating ones and zeros have gone on for too long. There must be an alternative. There must be something better than stock images of guys wearing hoodies.
The OpenIDEO challenge is looking for imagery that reflects more than just a superficial understanding of computers and security. They’re looking for imagery and design that, “represents and conveys cybersecurity” in an “accessible and compelling manner”. There’s a cash prize, too: 25 finalists get $500, and five winners get $7,000.
What sort of work is this challenge looking for? I have no idea. If you think of imagery that conveys cybersecurity, you’ll imagine someone wearing a hoodie, or someone at a keyboard, or maybe a padlock hovering above a Tron-like landscape of circuitry and code. There must be something better, and apparently, no one else knows what it could be.
