Phishing attacks and stolen credentials are becoming more common in the world of data security, and employee errors are helping to pave the way, according to a recent report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) report found that data breaches are usually associated with compromised references. It reads like a list of companies that have been hacked by cyber criminals, and lists what is the only data breach we know of. The Identity Theft Resource Center provided CNBC with data to forecast the largest data breaches announced for 2019, based on the number of compromised accounts.
The data glitch at Equifax in 2017 affected the personal data of 147 million people, but what made it so terrible was not the size, though significant. The value of the information stolen was the number of people who had access to that information, not the amount of information.
That is why it is time to take identity security seriously, and that is why we are outlining some steps that organizations can take to accelerate identity – security strategies. As the cost of data breaches continues to grow exponentially, companies should not only consider quantifiable costs. With the cost of data breaches likely to be reduced even further, or perhaps eliminated altogether, the IT team must encourage business leaders to understand how this could affect customers and businesses in a number of ways, not just their personal data.
First, a security breach involving the loss of trade secrets or confidential information can jeopardise the future of the company. If you suspect a data breach, it is crucial to prevent the theft of the information and repair the system to prevent the breach from recurring. While we do everything we can to protect companies from infringements, we cannot prevent data – infringement statistics – from overloading us. We were all duped after seeing our accounts compromised by the data breaches.
Note that cybercriminals can combine this information even if the data compromised in one breach does not match the information in the other breach (e.g. credit card numbers, passwords, etc.). For example, if a hacker gains access to an employee’s email account, the person can search the email to find access credentials for accounts with high permissions, which also compromises the password. Depending on whether or not the account has compromised passwords, hackers can gain access to user credentials, access the user’s database and gain access to sensitive information such as email addresses, social security numbers and passwords.
If an employee reuses a password from a compromised retail account or uses the name of their pet to log in, there is a risk of a breach because it makes it easier for cyber criminals to find a way into your system.
Organizations need to focus more on creating strong passwords by enforcing rules that lead to weaker references. If companies continue to avoid the real concerns that passwords cause, their sensitive information will be compromised.
Protecting your company’s data and systems from bad actors requires knowing when your company’s references are at risk, and it is not always its references that compromise. Given that 63% of confirmed data breaches involve weak or stolen passwords by default, an important first step is to reassess consolidation and protection of employees “digital identities. Revising your approach to identity security is essential to prevent data breaches and protect your company’s long-term success. Take a look at these tips for executives who have experienced a data breach and improved their identity – security.
To help organizations identify the weaknesses of their references, we have compiled a list reasons why your company’s passwords could be compromised. Common passwords and login credentials, which are compromised by attackers in public attacks, are used in corporate accounts to gain access. After a data breach, concerned companies try to calm their customers “fears and outrage by saying that the criminals have got the passwords but are encrypted.
The only thing you can do to prevent or detect insider attacks is to monitor employees who leave your company with respect to sensitive information and ensure that the credentials of terminated employees are revoked as quickly as possible. Although there is no way to know exactly what employees did with the sessions of sensitive data, one can only hope that negligence or mistakes on their part will help you to detect a cyber security breach. Although there are many examples of employees logging in from private devices, many companies have no idea who the employee is or what they are up to.