SAFE

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.

My company was hit again with a Business Phish this February targeting a new hire, same as last time.  This is why it so important to have cyber training the first training a new employee receives.  In my cases, new employees were targeted within a few weeks of coming on board.  In each case, the new-be receives an email from an executive manager.  The request is simple, get bank cards, gift cards and so on and email back the transaction numbers so the receiver can cash in and the new-be just lost hundreds of dollars or more.  This is a “Business Phish” and the simplest to execute.

Living in a business world of confidential data, documents and managing who can have access to the same, is a daunting task. With the world of identity theft simple logins and passwords don’t cut it anymore. People who are trusted with securing the perimeter need more help and that change is coming quickly in the form of “Two Factor Authentication” (2FA). 2FA is not new. What’s new is its requirement in daily business application logon. Example, today case managers login to their solution, enter their password and go to work. What’s coming as “Best Practices” is introducing a second step of authentication such as Smartphone texting access codes or emails. Users, in addition to having a password, will need a device to navigate the second step before they can go to work.

In the spirit of Tech Tock, I’m going to discuss Cyber Security from a compliance perspective. This is still about technology and does have a sense of urgency for financial services professional. The trend I’ve witnessed for the last few years is pushing downward into the supply chain, compliance. Cyber Security companies believe they have a good handle on defensive, layering, real-time protection and that the problem today is pushing down into the supply chain and continues to close vulnerabilities.

Tech-Tock is a new column where we address the cyber world connection to Life Insurance and the channels. Several Thought Leaders will discuss the latest technology trends and why you should care about mobile/marketing, web/new business, document management/compliance, security/risk and more; basically, technology, its business effect, and its trends. At the end of the day, we want to intrigue you and give you a sense of urgency to integrate with change.

Handwriting Recognition and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) have been around for decades and remained a less than effective solution for transcription to accurate data.  OCR even though starting in the late 1800s, took on practical application in the late 1950s.

Cyber criminals, Hackers and Governments continue to enhance their abilities to enter your computing environment.  The tools are becoming more sophisticated and their skill to go undetected is improving.  These attacks have methods where history shows “elevated privileges” is the primary objective.The end goal then is to steal, replace, hold hostage or destroy your data.  Now the problem, most if not all cyber defense tools and strategies are built to stop yesterday’s attack.  That why when I sit through conferences they always say the same thing, “It not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when”.