The catastrophic data breaches that exposed millions of Australians’ personal information at Medibank and Optus revealed a fundamental flaw in how organisations protect data – one that even the best cybersecurity tools can’t fix.
Now an Australian start-up claims it has solved the problem that made those breaches so devastating, and the world’s leading insurance marketplace is backing the technology.
Tide Foundation has announced a partnership with Lloyd’s-backed underwriter Becco that will provide preferential insurance coverage to companies adopting technology designed to eliminate the “choke points” that turned the Medibank and Optus incidents from simple breaches into national crises.
The catastrophic data breaches that exposed millions of Australians’ personal information at Medibank and Optus revealed a fundamental flaw in how organisations protect data.Credit: Getty Images
The choke points are system administrators, database managers and compromised credentials that provide god-mode access to entire databases. For most companies’ systems, once attackers breach the perimeter – through phishing, insider threats, or vulnerabilities in third-party software – they gain the same sweeping access as legitimate administrators.
“You’ve got these centralised pockets of authority that exist in the digital world, and they pose a massive risk to everyone who’s relying on them,” Tide co-founder Michael Loewy told this masthead.
“Someone, somewhere, must hold the keys to decrypt and access data – and that someone can be compromised, coerced, or become a rogue insider.”
After seven years of research and development validated by Australian universities including RMIT, Deakin and University of Wollongong, Tide’s solution is deceptively simple: lock data with cryptographic keys that no one ever holds – not system administrators, not rogue CTOs, not even Tide itself.
“Even if someone has gained complete control of your system, it doesn’t mean you end up with the mass data breaches we’re seeing daily,” Loewy said.
Tide Foundation co-founder Michael Loewy, Becco co-founder Geoff Stooke, Tide Foundation co-founder Yuval Hertzog, Becco co-founder James Soutter, Tide Foundation co-founder Dominique Valladolid.Credit: Tide Foundation.
