- Amazon has major problems with customer data security, According to the new connection report.
- Amazon’s former security chief said that the company’s infrastructure was held together by “tape and bubble gum.”
- “It shocked me,” said Gary Gagnon, a former vice president of security at Amazon.
- For more stories, please visit www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
When Amazon’s former vice president of information security was first hired in early 2017, he found that Amazon’s consumer security infrastructure was a mess.
“It’s all pieced together with tape and bubble gum,” Gary Gagnon told Wired“It grew up in the garage, and it runs there all the time.”
He said that although the company has strong security for new unreleased products, Amazon is completely open to the security of customer data and lacks resources.
“It shocked me,” Gagnon told Wired.
When he asked for a budget to hire more employees, he said he was often rejected.At the same time, Amazon employees’ access to customer information is astonishing, he said—so much so that Amazon employees Reportedly monitor celebrity purchases.
Gagnon went on to describe a company that focuses on growth and customer satisfaction at all costs-including basic consumer protection.
“Amazon’s philosophy is about customer experience. They want to please customers… and this is at the expense of everything else,” he said.
He detailed his concerns in an internal memo to Jeff Wilk, Amazon’s former consumer chief executive, and Wired magazine saw his concerns. Gagnon stated in it that Amazon’s security team cannot keep up with the company’s expansion and therefore cannot fully protect its data.
“We lack visibility into the data we are responsible for protecting,” Gagnon wrote. “We do not systematically understand the data flow and storage location of sensitive data.”
Amazon spokesperson Jen Bemisderfer refuted Gagnon’s statement and said the company “has an excellent track record in protecting customer data.” In addition, Bemisderfer stated that Amazon has “invested billions of dollars over the years to build systems and processes to ensure data security, and is constantly looking for ways to improve.”
