Inside Asian Gaming

APRIL 2018 INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 27 “I think major casinos these days understand where the risks are coming from. The key is implementing strategies across the board.” IN FOCUS A S cautionary tales go, the downfall of once hugely popular Hong Kong singer and actor Edison Chen might seem a fair way removed from Macau’s gaming industry. But for Paul Jackson, former Chief Inspector and head of IT forensics with the Hong Kong Police Force, there remain some key lessons to be learned. Chen was one of Asia’s biggest stars during the early-to-mid 2000s but his glittering career came crashing down in 2008 after he dropped his computer off at a repair shop, where a technician discovered and leaked over 1,000 intimate images of the actor with various female Asian celebrities. “It was hardly the most complex hacking incident that I have had to investigate, but it hit the front page for several weeks and killed his reputation,” recalls Jackson, now Asia-Pacific Leader for the Cyber Security and Investigations Practice of risk mitigation firm Kroll. “The reputational aspect is what makes you realize just what a huge impact this sort of thing can have. Yes, he was careless enough to take his laptop for repair knowing that it had these photos in it, but the resulting damage was enormous. It’s certainly something I’ll always remember. “Like with the Chen case, many data breaches that we investigate are not the result of high sophistication or technical capability on the part of the culprits. Ultimately, many breaches are the results of human error or failures to maintain effective governance. It may not be the most technical case I’ve ever worked on, nor the most sophisticated, but boy was it high profile and reputation damaging. The Chen case has parallels to everything we read in the news today where someone makes a simple mistake and pays a heavy price. “Cybercrime is about reputation.” For Macau’s world-leading gaming industry, data is everything. Paul Jackson Jason Smolanoff