[ISN] Strengthening Third-Party Contracts To Lower Breach Risks

http://www.darkreading.com/database-security/167901020/security/news/232601293/strengthening-third-party-contracts-to-lower-breach-risks.html

By Ericka Chickowski
Contributing Writer
Dark Reading
Feb 22, 2012

Details emerged this week that showed that recent Anonymous hacks of 
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) websites could potentially have been 
prevented had the FTC not dispensed with security provisions in a 
contract with the third-party vendors who hosted the sites. As 
organizations continue to divide labor in IT—particularly in development 
of public-facing websites—the incident could prove a good lesson in the 
importance of shoring up contract language and SLAs to ensure third 
parties are not adding undue risks of data breaches in the future.

In the case of the FTC, the federal agency suffered two embarrassing 
breaches within the last two months. In January, Anonymous attacked the 
FTC’s OnGuardOnline.gov site and this month it again hacked the FTC’s 
Bureau of Consumer Protection site. The websites in question were open 
to attack due to a failure to patch the server operating systems and 
applications associated with the site, a weakness that Anonymous took 
advantage of to publicize its distaste for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade 
Agreement (ACTA) backed by the federal government.

“Even more bothersome than your complete lack of competence in 
maintaining your own f***ing websites and serving the citizens you are 
supposed to be protecting, is the US federal government’s support of 
ACTA,” Anonymous wrote about its most recent attack.

The sites in question were developed by public relations firm 
Fleishman-Hilliard, which hosted the sites on resources provided by 
hosting and cloud services provider Media Temple. The two firms are 
currently duking it out in a very public finger-pointing spat reported 
by Ars Technica, which also brought to light the fact that the $1.5 
million contract to develop the sites initially included security 
provisions during the acquisition process but then dropped those 
requirements.

[...]


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