Data breaches are a huge challenge that modern organizations must deal with today. This week, we learned of several education-related breaches, as well as a few financial breaches. The National Student Clearinghouse and Lakeland Community College in Ohio were both hit with serious data breaches. There were also breaches with BMO Bank, the Brady Martz & Associates Accounting firm, and the Delta Dental of California health insurance provider.
BMO Bank is the 8th largest bank in the United States, employing over 12,000 individuals. The bank manages more than $3 Billion in annual reserves and works with a huge number of customers as it has over 1,000 physical locations across the country. BMO Bank is based in Chicago, Illinois, but has locations throughout the country. If you bank with BMO, your data may be at risk, because the organization was recently hacked and lost a significant amount of customer data.
Lakeland Community College is a public school located in Lake County, Ohio. The school serves approximately 8,700 students at one time and provides over 135 different associate degrees and technical certificates. The school has more than 900 employees and generates over $104 million in revenue annually. Over many years the school serves tens of thousands of students, which means that it's processing and storing a substantial amount of information.
Delta Dental of California is a major dental insurance provider throughout one of the largest states in the US. The company is well-known for offering PPO dental insurance policies and other varieties of dental insurance options. The company was founded in 1955 and serves millions of Americans throughout nearly all of the 50 states. All California residents using Delta Dental may have been impacted by a recent data breach that could cause real problems for them.
The National Student Clearinghouse is a research facility that gathers data on students from approximately 22,000 high schools and more than 3,600 different colleges. Between all these schools throughout the United States, approximately 97% of the total student population is enrolled in the National Student Clearinghouse. That means the information for most students is on file with the organization.
This week, we noticed that data breach attackers targeted a substantial number of hospitals. north Carolina patients are being impacted the most currently. Along with health groups like Atrium and Novant Health, nonprofit Save the Children was hit by a breach, as was the TransUnion credit bureau and Caesars Entertainment. A huge number of people were impacted by this breach between these different major organizations.
Both Atrium Health and Novant Health are health organizations that work with a large number of hospitals offering services. These v work with data from thousands of patients and enable standard hospital practices to occur. Between the two organizations, a huge number of different hospitals and private practices are involved. That's why it's upsetting to learn that both of these organizations were recently breached.
According to a recent data dump on a hacker forum, credit giant TransUnion was recently the victim of a data breach. It's unclear whether the company itself was breached, but it does appear that TransUnion customers have been compromised. Find out more to see what the potential risk is to you, if any.
The latest data from IBM shows that the average cost of a data breach has gone up by 2% to a whopping $4.45 million. You would think that in the cybersecurity industry, people would be all about safety and security, right? I mean, it's literally in the name. But here's the kicker: more than half (55%) of cybersecurity professionals have admitted to being risky when it comes to their cybersecurity practices at work.
