Good Essay On Attacked And Breached: Now What?

If I was the CEO of Target at the time when the 2013 data security breach was discovered, I would have acted on the malware alert that the FireEye anti-malware system had sent. I would have instructed the personnel manning the FireEye system to switch on the feature that would enable the eradication of the hack that had managed to penetrate the system at Target. Reports show that the first malware alert was issued on 30th November 2013 and no one took any action (Riley, Elgin, Lawrence & Matlack, 2014). The hackers proceeded to upload five versions of malware and FireEye sent alerts on all the five hacks. All the alerts were ignored by the personnel at Target. Reports show that the hackers started to download data from Target on 2nd December 2013. Immediate reaction upon receiving the first alert on malware would have prevented the download of customers’ data (Smith, 2014). As the CEO of Target, I would have instructed the personnel to switch on the feature on FireEye so as to eradicate the malware, and then I would have given further instructions that the feature on FireEye should never be turned off. The feature on FireEye would have enabled automatic capturing and eradication of the malware.
It is not ok for victimized organizations to hack back. Hacking back involves launching attacks on other systems, accessing unauthorized systems, and the distribution of codes that enable unauthorized access into other people’s systems (Cobb, 2015). These actions are illegal and may make the organization face lawsuits. Hacking back may make the criminals target other smaller companies leading to nationwide unrest. Hacking back can make the attackers angrier and make them look for more weak spots in the system of the victimized organization so that they can cause more damages. The victimized organization may hack back on the system of an organization that is not an attacker. There is always conflicting information about the identity of the hackers (Cobb, 2015). Hacking back also creates more problems rather than providing a solution to the problem.

Works Cited

Riley Michael, Ben Elgin, Dune Lawrence, & Carol Matlack. Missed Alarms and 40 Million Stolen Credit Card Numbers: How Target Blew it. 13 Mar. 2014. Web. 8 Apr. 2015. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-13/target-missed-alarms-in-epic-hack-of-credit-card-data
Smith Chris. It Turns out Target Could have Easily Prevented Its Massive Security Breach. 13 Mar. 2014. Web. 8 Apr. 2015. http://bgr.com/2014/03/13/target-data-hack-how-it-happened/
Cobb Stephen. 5 Reasons Not to Hack Back. 7 Jan. 2015. Web. 8 Apr. 2015. http://www.welivesecurity.com/2015/01/07/5-reasons-not-to-hack-back/