Posts Tagged: "data breach"

Imagine the following scenario: You have an idea for a new mobile application. As adoption of the app picks up, so does your business, and you hire more employees to provide sales and support assistance. You are on your way to transforming your startup into a successful business. Needing additional capital to scale the business more quickly, you identify a strategic partner interested in investing in your business. Before you can close on the funding, several employees report that they did not receive their paychecks through the direct deposit system. The investigation reveals that several months ago, your organization received a series of spear phishing emails. You learn that multiple employees opened the email and its attachment giving the cybercriminals access to your systems. Not only are you out the payroll money, but you also learn that in addition to your employees’ banking information, the criminals had access to your customer contact information and the source code for your app. A cyberattack is an unwelcome event for any company, but the effects can be especially detrimental to a startup, with 60% or more of small businesses that experience a data breach going out of business within a year of the breach. It is impossible for any size business to guarantee a system that is fully secure. However, not all companies have millions of dollars to invest in cybersecurity and by allocating even limited funds to assessing your data privacy risks, implementing a protection plan and creating an incident response plan, a startup can significantly improve its chances of surviving a cyberattack.

To get the case off the ground, the court will decide whether Equifax can be sued in the first place – it’s tricky, because different federal circuits disagree about when this can happen. So, courts in Delaware, Illinois and Washington DC (for example) would allow the plaintiffs to proceed merely because their data is at risk after a hack. This is pretty easy to show. On the other hand though, New York, Conneticut and North Carolina would need to see not just a leak, but that the leaked data has actually been misused afterwards. Equifax HQ is in Atlanta, the 11th circuit. Although those courts have a history of recognising that difficulty (and so supporting data victim lawsuits), it hasn’t yet come down firmly on the question of risk vs misuse.

Cyber crimes and data breaches have become far too widespread in the recent times. Technological progress has taken the risk to new levels, with newer techniques to exploit vulnerable organizations, corporations and governments being discovered every day… A considerable number of organizational respondents to the survey, approximately 32%, reported being affected by cyber crime. Nearly 34% felt that they would be affected within the next 2 years. While 61% of the top executives feared cyber attacks, only 37% of organizations claimed to have a cyber incident response plan in place. Obviously, this represents a significant disconnect between the level of fear and the level of preparedness in the industry.

Cybercrime seemed to be in the news daily in 2016. From the hack of the Democratic National Committee email accounts to the massive data breaches suffered by large technology companies, a major restaurant chain, and numerous government agencies, the news seemed inundated by a steady stream of high profile cybercrime. What is in store for 2017? Given the proliferation of electronic devices and data in our society, we can reasonably expect cases of cybercrime to continue to increase in number and complexity in the new year.

Over the past few years we have seen a surge in cyber attacks against well-known organizations, each seemingly larger than the last. As cybercriminals look for innovative ways to penetrate corporate infrastructures, the challenges for brand owners to protect their IP has steadily grown… Most organizations have implemented stringent security protocols to safeguard their IT infrastructure, but conventional security measures don’t provide the critical intelligence needed to analyze cyberattacks that propagate in the Deep Web and Dark Web. It is fundamentally harder to navigate a medium where web pages are unindexed and anonymity can hide criminal activity.

High value information—identified as trade secrets, IP mappings, product designs, financial data, confidential business information and similar files and documents—require an extra level of protection because of their value to cybercriminals and malicious insiders. The last thing an organization wants to do is make the theft of high value information easier by leaving vulnerability gaps in security practices. A malicious actor will exploit those each and every time.

It has become more apparent in recent years that cybercriminals looking to profit from sensitive data are zoning in on law firms and their wealth of client information. Get ahead and prepare for clients asking questions about your security posture by closely examining your firm’s environment. Taking this preemptive action will help you detect gaps where confidential client data could be at risk, regardless of where and on what devices the information is stored. This assessment is easy to accomplish through the many proven services currently available in the market. Understanding where exactly your firm’s sensitive client data is being stored and how it’s being used is a critical first step to safeguarding that information.

Much of the data security world has been abuzz since a blog post at the digital privacy website DataBreaches.net reported the disconcerting news that the personal information of 191 million voters participating in U.S. elections going back to the year 2000 was made available on the Internet by a party who is yet unknown. These records include voter information which is requested at the time of registration, which in many cases includes home addresses, date of birth, telephone number and state voter identification. Making these voter records available online violates confidentiality restrictions on accessing records put in place by California and other states.

Yet another tech developer known for consumer electronics is getting into the autonomous vehicle market, a sign that we can continue to expect disruption for the conventional automaker model in that sector. A recent data breach settlement underscores the growing cybersecurity threat the world faces. The latest theory about alien life on other planets starts to fizzle and fade. Also, we hear some stories featuring notable names in the tech business world, including Michael Bloomberg and Elon Musk.

Our latest Tech Round-Up here on IPWatchdog takes a brief glance at many of the stories which have caught our attention in recent days. As he often does, Elon Musk takes center-stage in a couple of news items regarding challenges he’ll be facing in the realms of space travel as well as electric vehicles. In Europe, the first successful installation of light-based wireless Internet could be the first step in a new age of Internet connectivity. Data breaches and genetically modified foods round out our discussion of recent events in the worlds of high-tech and science.