The 2020 Cost of Data Breach report from IBM and the Ponemon is out. It provides a detailed analysis of causes, costs and controls that appeared in their sampling of data breaches. The report is full of data, and the website allows you to interact with its information so that you can do your own analysis and/or dig into aspects relevant to you and your industry.
Data breaches are growing in frequency and intensity amidst the recent Coronavirus pandemic, having increased by nearly 273% in the first quarter compared to the same time frame last year. In fact, 2020 may very well be remembered as the year when cybersecurity became a business problem rather than a technology issue. The driving factor here is the recent shift in workforce culture. More and more organizations are now setting up remote working teams.
Last year, Capital One showed the world why data governance is so important when it was the victim of a massive data breach that exposed the personal data of 106 million customers. It is still one of the biggest hacks ever recorded, and the company has now been fined $80 million by banking regulators. A “what’s in your wallet” meme would work great here, but let’s keep this classy.
VPN stands for virtual private network. It allows you to hide your public IP address and browse privately on the internet without being tracked or watched. Basically, a VPN offers you a thick layer of privacy when using your home Wi-Fi or public. These networks were originally designed for big businesses and governments that wanted to keep their activities secret and secure.
The Managed Threat Detection and Response (MTDR) analyst team was notified of multiple logins from different countries. With the shift to a more remote workforce, multiple logins from different locations is not uncommon, but the team discovered the potentially compromised account belonged to a third-party and immediately took action. Every year businesses lose millions due to data breaches caused by third parties.
In case 2020 wasn’t dystopian enough, here’s some more unbelievable news. On July 15, 2020, social media giant Twitter admitted it fell victim to a security breach. The attackers targetted 130 Twitter accounts, including several belonging to high-profile individuals such as elected officials; former president Barack Obama; and business leaders including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk.
The issue of unsecured databases is growing. In 2019, 17 percent of all data breaches were caused by human error — twice as many as just a year before. And the IBM/Ponemon 2019 report found that the estimated probability of a company having repeated data breaches within two years grew by 31 percent between 2014 and 2019. Why is this happening?
More information has emerged related to last week’s attack which saw a number of high profile Twitter accounts hijacked for the purposes of spreading a cryptocurrency scam. Twitter has already said that 130 Twitter accounts were targeted by hackers, using tools that should only have been available to the site’s internal support team.
Wednesday 15 July 2020 saw the compromise of multiple high-profile Twitter users, including cryptocurrency exchanges, famous individuals and organizations, with their accounts subsequently being abused to Tweet cryptocurrency giveaway scams.
This blog was written by an independent guest blogger. In the age of the internet where everyone has a mobile phone and multiple social media profiles, one phrase has become synonymous with doom and dread - data breach. It seems like these breaches have become a regular occurrence in modern society. Small businesses may be particularly susceptible to security hacks, but even large corporations are not immune.
