By Kevin M. Nixon, MSA, CISM®, CISSP®, CGEIT® (pending)
INTRO:
Current Economic events leave all of us with feelings of fear, uncertainty and doubt. This is a look back to January 1937, and how Johnny Cash's parents & hundreds of others endured the loss of every material possession following the Great Flood and in the middle of the Great Depression. To honor his parents, Johnny Cash wrote & recorded "Five Feet High and Risin'".
Watch the Video, read the article, look at the news and then think of two other people that might gain from your help because they might be more uncertain than you. Looking forward to your comments & feedback.
Seventy-two (72) years ago this week the Great Ohio River Flood of January 1937 surpassed all prior floods during the previous 247 years of modern occupancy of the Ohio River Valley. The overall geological evidence suggests the 1937 flood outdid any previous flood with 70% of Louisville submerged, causing 175,000 residents to flee.
According to NOAA’s National Weather Service office in Louisville, KY, 90% of Jeffersonville, Indiana was flooded. One contemporary source estimated that damage was done to the tune of $250,000,000 (1937 dollars)...that's over $3.3 billion in current dollars!! (US Dept of Commerce & the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
Through the camera lens: The Great Flood of 1937
These historical photos are copyrighted by and property of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
At Louisville, the crest of the 1937 flood is still a full ten feet higher than the second highest crest, set in 1945! At McAlpine Lock, the 1937 flood crested at 85.4 feet. By way of comparison, today flood stage is 55 feet, and the current normal water stage is around 28 feet. Louisville received fifteen (15) inches of rain in only twelve 12 days, from the 13th to the 24th of January, 1937. More than 19 inches of rain fell over the course of the month and there was no measurable snowfall during the entire month.
So why is a security geek going on about a flood?
I often find myself thinking and working through difficult or stressful problems concerning a new governance, risk and compliance regulation or a new security threat by thinking about them as images and/or sounds. Additionally, part of my daily ritual, despite where I may be working around the world, is to set aside 2 hours for myself as "my CNN Time". I almost go through a form of withdrawal unless I watch Larry King, Anderson Cooper and Erica Hill.
I find that in spite of the current headlines, politics or grim economic outlook, Larry, Anderson and Erica always manage to capture an angle on a topic that all other news professionals completely miss. Over the last 2 weeks, as world economic news has grown increasingly more somber, I realized that I kept "hearing" the phrase "How high's the water mama?".
Apparently, my personal form of sardonic humor often kicks in to counteract sinking into complete melancholy. This week, in an effort to finally shake the tune which seemed to be conspiring against me, I decided to research the background and motivation of Johnny Cash when he wrote and recorded "Five Feet High and Risin'" in October 1959.
As I had suspected, it was the result of Johnny Cash watching his parents struggle to take advantage of a 1935 "New Deal" farm program that provided them with 20 acres of land and a 5 room house. Just as everything was beginning to improve, the Great Flood of January 1937 completely devastated the Cash family. Left only with determination Johnny's mother and father had to begin again with even less than before. Before reading this article, please view this really great YouTube video.
"Remembering The Great Flood of 1937" - 72 Years Ago
Ian (aka, misteralmuranas710)
YouTube Video by:
Music by: Johnny Cash, Recorded Oct. 25, 1959
Factoids:
URL: http://www.youtube.com/v/2qFLnwiP7jQ&hl=en&fs=1
Assuming you have followed directions, and have viewed the video, you should have a better understanding of how the 1937 flood, a Johnny Cash song and the current economic headline are all related. Four (4) very significant issues were revealed this week. Under each new economic is an associated verse from the song, which are used to emphasize the gravity of our current crisis. With each event of the past week, the US slowly ebbed higher and higher toward "Economic Flood Stage".
- This week Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (1/26, 1/27, and 1/28), over 100,000 US Workers have already been given notice of layoff or impending layoff;
How high's the water, mama? Two feet high and risin'
How high’s the water, papa? Two feet high and risin'
We can make it to the road in a homemade boat
That's the only thing we got left that'll float
It's already over all the wheat and the oats,
Two feet high and risin'
- As of December 31st 200, 3.2 million households submitted foreclosure filings;
How high's the water, mama? Three feet high and risin'
How high’s the water, papa? Three feet high and risin'
Well, the hives are gone, I've lost my bees
The chickens are sleepin' In the willow trees
Cow's in water up past her knees,
Three feet high and risin'
- At 10:00 a.m. EST, Wednesday, January 28th 2009 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that for all of 2008, the total number of mass layoff events was 21,137, and that first time unemployment claims reached their highest annual levels - 2,130,220. The national unemployment rate was 7.2 percent in December.
How high's the water, mama? Four feet high and risin'
How high’s the water, papa? Four feet high and risin'
Hey, come look through the window pane,
The bus is comin', gonna take us to the train
Looks like we'll be blessed with a little more rain,
Four feet high and risin'
- As of 5:00 p.m. EST, Wednesday, January 28th 2009, the Open Security Foundation and the Privacy Rights Organization had recorded a significant increase of private & confidential data breaches.
If you didn't look at the amount of potential data exposed, the potential total Thursday, 1/29 exceeded >105 Million Records< and that was just during January 2009.
Very simply put, in just 28 days the total number of data records exposed in 2009 is equal to 83.25% of the entire sum total of the years 2005 through 2008.
How high's the water, mama? Five feet high and risin'
How high's the water, papa? Five feet high and risin'
Well, the rails are washed out north of town
We gotta head for higher ground
We can't come back till the water comes down,
Five feet high and risin'
Well, it's five feet high and risin'
Well, it's five feet high and risin'
In 90 days, the numbers of data records potentially exposed has been an increase of over 100%. Only in America could we fail so successfully that we actually doubled our losses! Don't you just wish that we could make those kinds of returns on homes for sale or interest on money locked in banks.
On January 6th, 2009 also known as the Feast of the Epiphany (Christian Liturgical Calendar) around 5 Million records (or that’s what they estimate) were being routed from the 3rd largest Credit Card Clearinghouse in the United States to the Ukrainian mob!
The US Company, Check Free Corp. (now owned by FISERV) and some of the banks that use its electronic bill payment service say that criminals took control of several of the company's Internet domains and redirected customer traffic to a malicious Web site hosted in the Ukraine. The company believes that about 160,000 consumers were exposed to the Ukrainian attack site. However, because the company lost control of its Web domains, it doesn't know exactly who was hit. And so, Check Free must warn a much larger number of customers.
SPECIAL HEALTH WARNING: Before reading the following paragraph please be seated and remove all sharp pointed objects from the area.
On January 20th 2009, Chairman and CEO, Robert O. Carr of Heartland Payment Systems of Princeton, NJ finally let the “cat out of the bag” after being hounded by IT Security and Compliance professionals for several weeks!
Heartland Payment Systems who is an automated credit clearinghouse member of First Data Corporation (the largest Credit Card Processing facility in the United States) began “looking into things”, after being alerted by Visa and MasterCard of suspicious activity surrounding processed card transactions, the company last week found evidence of malicious software that compromised card data that crossed Heartland's network. This incident may be the result of a global cyber fraud operation.
Heartland processes over 100 million transactions per month. It is not clear to the officers or executives if Social Security Numbers or financial account numbers were exposed.
Why didn't those Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standards which are required controls not stop this from happening? Well, standards have "no force of law". They will continue to have no teeth, until the President and Congress enacts laws that criminally punish company executives that allow the business they control to use weak or no security controls to protect us.
Stockholders have some legal recourse, but the every day, middle class American who simply carries a credit card to pay for gas or groceries ends up with the "fuzzy end of the lollipop!
As of 6:00 p.m. EST, January 28th 2009, the Washington Post reported the following item on this continuing story:
“The data stolen includes the digital information encoded onto the magnetic stripe built into the backs of credit and debit cards. Armed with this data, thieves can fashion counterfeit credit cards by imprinting the same stolen information onto fabricated cards.”
Although according to the Washington Post article, a spokesman for Heartland says “that without a card present” it would be very difficult to process charges to an account.
For the record, it should be noted that if all of the “digital information encoded on the magnetic stripe” than the Card Verification Value otherwise known as a CVV number, is also present on the magnetic stripe.
The credit card processing authority would “assume” that the card had actually been “eyeballed and ID was checked”, leaving the poor consumer and the merchant or place of business on the hook for all of the charges.
If you think we have a credit-banking problem now, just remember all of those fine IT Security folks that no longer have jobs protecting your good name, because the executives were in on the take from the very beginning.
So next time you reach for your credit card, just start humming to yourself How high's the water, mama? Five feet high and risin' and remember the Great Flood of 1937 - along with 2 of the companies that let us float all the way down stream!
© Copyright 2009 – Kevin M. Nixon – All Rights Reserved (This article may be reprinted in whole or in part only with proper attribution to the author.)
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