Response: "Is Twitter the newest data security threat?"

Lori MacVittie posted a compelling piece asking "Is Twitter the newest data security threat?"

In my opinion, the answer is "No." It's merely one of tens of thousands of potential avenues of exploitation that can be used intentionally or unintentionally by the real security threat: Those whom you trust to access your data in the first place.

Data Loss Prevention suites, Network Access Control, filtering web proxies and other technological solutions are only masking the problem while making it harder for your employees to work efficiently. Michael J. Santarcangelo, II's book, Into The Breach concisely discusses the real problem behind breaches and a sound Strategy to make it better. It takes everything we already acknowledge as security professionals and re-arranges it in a way that makes a lot of sense.

In short, security researchers, employers, and journalists need to wake up. Use technology to assist properly-trained employees who are held accountable for their mistakes instead of using technology to restrict clueless employees, and allowing the blame to fall on some software package when things go wrong. When do you start ACTUALLY trusting the people you trust with your data?

The issue of customer service via Twitter is a different bag of worms. The decision to use twitter as an enterprise avenue of support is a strategic decision that's better left to marketing, PR and CxO-types. I'd hope they'd analyze the potential impact of making a subset of their customer list public.