Question

What would you have done if you were the CEO of Target in 2013, the Director of the Federal Government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015, or the CEO of Equifax in 2017 at the time that their respective data security breaches were discovered (note what all these breaches have in common)? Is it OK for a victimized organization or government agency to “hack back”? What are the dangers?

Answer discussion style.

Answer 1

Hack back can be seen as the activity in which the organization tries to find out the source of hacking of the information system of the company. This is the anticipation of the system engineers about the possible hacking and thus implementing the security provisions for the organization.

If we look at the current laws in the USA , all the activities related to hacking back are restrained and only few government agencies are permitted to conduct such an activity. In my opinion, it is correct to accuse and held greater accountabilities on these organizations for the hacking back as these organizations do not have sufficient security for their information system or database that consists of private data of millions of customers. the customers believe that their private data is safe and secured with these organizations but in order to save some money and due to technical incompetence, these organizations have been failing in fulfilling their ethical and legal duty to safeguard the vital data. In my opinion, they must be criticized for their role in ensuring the improper safety and security of the data.

If this is not done then there will be greater danger of their laxity and these organizations will not take the significance of data security seriously The data breach is becoming quite common as the number of data in increasing every passing day that is very critical and important for the organization.