Industry:FTC Protecting Consumer Privacy

Return to Global Industry Committee

Submission Response
Latest first

Introduction
This official response has been submitted on behalf of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) by the OWASP Global Industry Committee, following our own consultation process.

Response
The OWASP response is to six of the FTC's questions for comment, which we have labelled a) to f) for our own purposes. The questions responded to relate to aspects within OWASP's mission to "to make application security visible, so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about true application security risks.". In somke cases, questions are not answered explicitly where OWASP does not have an agreed opinion, but intstead application related matters to consider are highlighted which may affect the topic of the question.

a) Companies should promote consumer privacy throughout their organizations and at every stage of the development of their products and services > Incorporate substantive privacy protections > When it is not feasible to update legacy data systems, what administrative or technical procedures should companies follow to mitigate the risks posed by such systems?

i) Although it may be economically infeasible to change legacy systems, it is often the case that these systems are modified, or access provided to them through new mechanisms (e.g. by a web service, or using a mobile application). The changes and additions should still consider building privacy in.

ii) For legacy data systems which cannot be altered, the techniques of data minimization, data integrity checking and data tokenization should be considered first. Thereafter conventional administrative and technical controls (e.g. segregation of duties, principle of least privilege, etc) should be applied, but we would like to highlight the following application-specific controls:


 * documentation of security defaults and options that affect security
 * secure configuration of the application and application environment
 * application event log analysis
 * application layer firewalls
 * application surface exposure minimization
 * application layer intrusion detection and prevention
 * data egress monitoring

iii) If multiple methods (e.g. desktop application, web site, web service, mobile application, accessible web site) are used to access a business process, all of these should have similar levels of privacy protection built in, so that one channel can not be used to circumvent another, and similarly for non-application alternatives (e.g. customer call center, walk-in shop, telephone self-service, etc).

b) Companies should promote consumer privacy throughout their organizations and at every stage of the development of their products and services > Maintain comprehensive data management procedures > How can the full range of stakeholders be given an incentive to develop and deploy privacy-enhancing technologies?

i) Privacy requirements should be build into development & procurement practices. Verification processes must be undertaken to ensure these have been delivered - a risk based approach should be used to ensure effort is applied proportionately through the portfolio of processes.

ii) It is not sufficient just to use PETs - they must be installed, configured and operated correctly.

c) Companies should promote consumer privacy throughout their organizations and at every stage of the development of their products and services > Maintain comprehensive data management procedures > What roles should different industry participants – e.g., browser vendors, website operators, advertising companies – play in addressing privacy concerns with more effective technologies for consumer control?

For services delivered over web technologies, besides the operators of the services, the software programming languages, code libraries, frameworks, host environment, network and browser can all affect the efficacy of privacy protection. Every part of the supply chain throughout the software development lifecycle (including operation and disposal), needs to be able to understand the privacy-affecting aspects and effects. There is an need for increased visibility.

d) Companies should simplify consumer choice > Commonly accepted practices > Is the list of proposed “commonly accepted practices” set forth in Section V(C)(1) of the report too broad or too narrow?

i) The commonly accepted practice of "internal operations" may not always be obvious to consumers. The example of website collecting information about visits and click-though rates is used.  Consumer may well expect the organisation they are interacting with to do this, but they probably are not expecting their data to being collected, stored and processed directly by a third party which is often the case.  This is not at all obvious to consumers and is quite different to the physical example of hotels and restaurants collecting customer satisfaction surveys themselves.  Apart from web analytics, the inclusion of other third party hosted code (e.g. code libraries, widgets, syndicated content) has a similar effect.

ii) In the existing practice of "fraud detection", the use of "web server logs" are explicitly mentioned. These are not the only source of event data, and in any case, are not considered sufficient for most data protection purposes.  Practices should include the collection, aggregation and analysis of all types of event information (which could contain data about consumers). We would suggest changing the phrase "ordinary web server logs" to "web server, security event, audit, local client and other logs".

iii) The list of commonly accepted practices should include misuse detection and prevention. This is quite similar to the existing "fraud prevention" practice already included, but not all suspicious activity and attacks have fraud as the intent.  The intent may be to alter, delete or steal data, or to view unauthorized information, or to prevent access to the service by others.

iv) The list of commonly accepted practices should include data required for session management purposes. Many applications will not work at all unless session management data are allowed.  This data of course is still subject to privacy controls, limitations to use, etc.

e) Companies should increase the transparency of their data practices > Reasonable access to consumer data > Should companies inform consumers of the identity of those with whom the company has shared data about the consumer, as well as the source of the data?

With applications, the data sharing can be occurring at the same time as it is being provided, and not necessarily subsequently. For example, including code from a third party within a web page where the user is identifiable. In these cases, it may make sense to inform the consumer in advance.

f) Companies should increase the transparency of their data practices > Reasonable access to consumer data > Should consumers receive notice when data about them has been used to deny them benefits? How should such notice be provided? What are the costs and benefits of providing such notice?

Denial of benefits may occur when a user is logged out, locked out or otherwise prevented from accessing an application (e.g. IP address blacklisting). In some cases a particular consumer may be known (e.g. by the relationship to a particular user account name) or may only be through some other identifier (e.g. network address), which may not always be possible to identify an individual consumer at the time. Notices in these cases should include messages given by the application electronically.

About OWASP
to be added in final draft

Return to Global Industry Committee