Mike Bridges

In the insurance world, relationships are one of the main forms of currency. Carriers depend on distributors to help sell policies, who in turn depend on Carriers to deliver quickly, easily and securely. As both sides invest in the latest technology, a costly problem persists: these disparate systems don’t talk to each other. Data gaps. Delayed updates. Disjointed platforms. This is the silent friction point in every program launch, policy lifecycle, and new business submission — and it’s one of the biggest reasons operational efficiency suffers in otherwise strong partnerships. The data simply exists in too many places, in too many formats, with no clear path between them. This friction is no longer just an inconvenience; it’s inhibiting growth for both parties. The Data Silo Dilemma As carriers and distributors independently modernized over the past decade, they made technology decisions based on internal needs. Carriers invested in policy administration platforms, […]

Encryption in use is a new subject to many within the IT ecosystem. Many people confuse this concept (also called searchable encryption, queryable encryption, and data-in-use encryption) with other applications of encryption technologies and believe that their data is already encrypted while being processed or used to support critical operations. The most common response to the implementation of encryption in use question is to confuse it with encryption in transit as being one in the same, but encryption in use is in no way the same as encryption of data in transit. Encryption in use is a data security best practice. This blog post addresses the uniqueness of, and necessity for, greater adoption of this type of encryption. At the time this blog post is published, adoption of encryption of data in use technology is less than 1% globally. What is Encryption in Use? In simple terms, this refers to […]

The culture of cybersecurity and data protection is broken. Let’s look at it from a unique point of view. You’ve got an employee who is terrible at their job, consistently makes mistakes, and puts the company in harm’s way. Even worse, when you confront them about it, they make excuses, blame it on someone else, and really don’t care. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, this represents the posture of our cybersecurity community and our performance protecting data. Who really needs privacy in this digital age where we share every minute detail of our lives on social media anyway? While we’re walking down sarcastic lane, let’s look at encryption. Who needs it? Just implement better access controls and authentication, or better yet just plug in a better DLP product. Why would anyone bother encrypting their most valuable data—data in use? It’s not like there are hordes of cybercriminals just waiting to get their […]

Compliance has become the way we measure what cybersecurity actions are necessary to defend our electronic assets. The process of cybersecurity rulemaking and subsequent examinations for compliance (e.g., SOC2, ISO, SEC, FINRA, HIPAA) sets the roadmap for organizations. Cybersecurity compliance embodies our collective institutions of standards via controls, rules, regulations, and laws—yet these institutions often have differing agendas and confused messaging. What we do know is that cybercrime continues to grow despite the “Defense in Depth” approach we pursue today—often driven by compliance. We utilize a mix of products and services designed to play “hide and seek” without solving the challenge of data protection and privacy. Epistemology is a philosophy that explores the nature and limits of human knowledge. It is concerned with one’s knowledge in relation to reality: what do I know and how did I learn it? In cybersecurity, our knowledge is what we learn from previous cyber-attacks. […]

Data security experts and policy makers all agree, encryption is the best way to secure data. Encryption is essential to any business’s cybersecurity program, but many companies remain exposed. It’s estimated that hackers will steal over $24 trillion of data in the next three years. This is because many companies fail to understand encryption-in-use. What is encryption-in-use? It refers to is the ability to do computations on critical data while it remains encrypted. Right now, your most valuable and vulnerable data sits fully exposed as plaintext within your memory stack. Every threat actor knows this. Data theft is a growing epidemic, but it can be addressed with better data encryption.

If you are the owner or the caretaker of a financial services industry firm, then you have a $4 million plus liability waiting for you—the data breach. The financial services industry collects personal information (PII data), financial information, and—in the insurance field—health information (PHI data). This is the data the cyber criminals want to steal. Just to be clear, the information cyber criminals are after is mainly PII data—our names, social security numbers, date of birth, and anything that identifies an individual. Next is nonpublic information (NPI), typically financial information encompassing credit cards, bank accounts, loans, and mortgages. Cyber criminals are also after personal health information (PHI). This is any type of information regarding medical conditions, pharmacy, family history and more. These three categories of confidential information are at the center of transacting business in the financial services industry. According to the IBM 2021 Cyber Security Report, the average breach […]

The Life Brokerage Technology Committee (formerly NAILBA Technology) was a gathering of industry technology leaders and experience to discuss and report on standards and trends. The group was represented by Broker General Agencies, Carriers, Medical Information providers, and Solution Vendors. Workflows were documented, data sets were negotiated, and appetite to change was measured. In short, the day’s discussions produced new solutions and road maps that materialized some years later. The committee’s work over the last 2 decades did bear fruit and greatly impacted cycle time, accuracy (IGO), underwriting, digitalization to big data while the cost savings were taken over by rising compliance cost. 

Let’s start with some findings relating to the breach, current events.  A mega-breach is more than a million rows of data loss or stolen.  A million records are not hard to get to these days and if breached, the remediation expense is the heaviest in year one, two thirds, year two is twenty-two percent and then eleven percent for the out years, but as experience would tell us that toward the end of an event like this, the last eleven percent will cost you about half your money and half your time.

The notion that Cybercrime is fueling the Cryptocurrency market through money laundering activity, they are interdependent. If we eliminated 95% of cybercrime, we could declare victory and keep $5 trillion moving in our global economy.
I picked today to start writing because Bitcoin mining rewards halves today. BTC halving simply means, 50% pay cut for building (mining) blockchains therefore, I cut my expenses by half resulting in 50% fewer blocks verified per period, advantage cybercriminal. When I wrote part one of this article, BTC was trading at $6,800, this past Friday it closed at $10,000. No one can predict if BTC mining cutback is going to affect the coin price as it has in the past, I believe it will go up because of the COVID-19 pandemic and ignores the 50% mining reward cut.

I’ve always been curious about who’s making the money from cybercrime. Among the players we have Nation States, Organized Crime, Small teams to Individuals, so let’s follow the money. To keep this simple and about money, we’ll discuss the three most active cyberattacks, Phishing, Ransom, and Identity Thief. Each of these attacks has a list of usual suspects, Phishing is a small group or individuals, Ransom and Identity Theft are larger groups like Organized Crime and Nation-States.  According to McAfee, the top Nation-States are China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Central America.  All these groups combined in 2019 realized $1.5 trillion in money stolen, good guys to bad guys. The good guys also end up paying $4.0 trillion in money to clean up the mess; global cybercrime costs $5.5 trillion in 2019 in an $80 trillion global economy.