What are Security Spikes™?
Security Spikes are a new form of intrusion detection. Firewalls try to keep intruders out. Other countermeasures look for signatures or anomalies. Some analyze digital footprints after the fact.
Spikes work like the dye packs that stain bank robbers when they open the money bag. But Spikes use invisible tracers instead of dye. If someone steals from you and uses a Spiked record, alerts go out. Spikes allow you to know about some breaches earlier. They even catch breaches that would have gone undetected.
What Can Security Spikes™ Do For Me?
Get a Bronze Spike Pack when you buy a Breach Survival Kit. Kit Pricing
How Do Security Spikes™ Work?
A Unique Security Spike is Generated
Future releases will provide additional artificial identity elements and premium options like tracers for physical addresses, unique passwords and more.
The Spike is Recorded
Premium Spikes record documentation to a blockchain record. This record is public, but all identifying fields are obscured. All relevant Spike documentation is available via the Spike dashboard.
You Insert the Spike
You can add records to databases by merely pretending to be a new lead or a new customer. You can insert them however you want – the Spike does not care how it gets into your data.
You can also get very technical with your Spike insertions. You can put Spikes into your database at the table level. If your database is segmented, putting one in each segment. If your database has access levels, insert records at each user access level. If you have data that goes to specific vendors, add Spikes to particular shipments.
Do remember when protecting your valuable data, the fewer people in the loop, the better.
We Monitor, Alert, & Report
If you are inserting records into an active (hot) database, you may get alerts that you will need to disposition. Emails coming from outside your organization/domain(s) will register as a threat but could be innocent.
If you are inserting your Spike into an inactive (cold) database – one where no active marketing is happing – any activity may indicate a breach or a misuse of data.
Security Spikes in Action: 3 Use Cases
Sales Impact
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Without a Spike in place, it’s possible you would never know your data was stolen. Your customers may not figure it out unless many experience fraud. Once taken, who knows where your data will end up? But you have Data Security Spikes in place and now you have better business intelligence.
- You investigate and find that an employee was selling some of your leads to a competitor.
- With the information from your investigation and the documentation of the Spikes, you settled the dispute and your competitor paid you off rather than go to court.
Data protection can affect your business in many ways. It’s not just about consumer privacy rights.
Hack We Never Knew
That’s scary. Because if you don’t realize your systems have been penetrated, you can’t fix them, and you will continue to bleed.
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Up to this point, you didn’t realize you had a breach. The hacker has been careful. Your security software is good, he/she got around it. You customers haven’t realized anything is up. As far as you know, no critical information has been compromised, but now you really need to investigate, because:
- Since no one in the world knows about the Mary email address, you know beyond a doubt you have a breach.
The Vendor
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Since your Privacy Policy guarantees your clients that you will not sell their contact information, you have a problem. With the evidence, we present to you are able to prove that your processor is stealing your data. You cancel your contract and file a lawsuit, ultimately settling for a large payout. Knowledge is power.
Spike Lingo
Spikes are spiked records that we generate and you insert into your data. A record is considered ‘spiked’ if it:
- contains tracers that allow monitoring and scanning
- contains artificial identity info designed to obscure the tracers
Tracers are unique fields within a spiked record that allow us to monitor for activity. Generally, these are contact fields like email address, phone number, physical address, etc.
Artificial Identities are generated data points that flesh out a Spike so that it appears to be a normal record for a normal person.
Artificial Identities are used to hide tracers so that the Spike becomes effectively invisible. This is necessary because:
- real data cannot be used
- if the Spike doesn’t appear real, it might be disabled in by a person or a process
Alerts are email or SMS messages sent to you when a tracer has been used by an unknown entity. Alerts may indicate:
- a breach
- a privacy violation
- a legitimate marketing contact
“I really appreciate the ability to defend student data privacy.
My goal is to teach well. To do that I have to know these kids and the school has to collect data about them. That information has to be kept safe.
It seems to me that Security Spikes ought to be in every database.“
Sample Spike 5-Pack
| Spike 1 | Spike 2 | Spike 3 | Spike 4 | Spike 5 | |
| Email Tracer | ASearcy@__.net | usmcbro@__.us | cor.marc@__.com | DerkBarb1994@__.co | MWhiteM2009@_.com |
| Phone Tracer | 206-528-5487 | 832-452-0643 | 315-273-5586 | 209-606-4738 | 914-379-5100 |
| First Name | Ariana | Bryson | Corrine | Derek | Emma |
| Last Name | Searcy | Johnson | Marcellus | Barbosa | White |
| Company | Ulbrich | Trak Auto | Flipside Records | Hamady Bros. Markets | Bresler |
| Street | 326 Beechwood Avenue | 1132 Elliot Avenue | 1601 Buckhannan Avenue | 3986 Grasselli Street | 1332 Pallet Street |
| City | Piscataway | Seattle | Carthage | Dover | White Plains |
| State | New Jersey | Washington | New York | New Hampshire | New York |
| ZIP | 08854 | 98115 | 13619 | 03820 | 10601 |
| Other | Taekwondo | SSN 125-26-9843 | Married, with children | WU MTCN: 7399116037 | Capricorn |