Here’s your monthly roundup of the latest hacks and data breaches around the world. In this monthly series, I’ll share information and updates on the most recent hacks that I saw in the news, including causes, resolutions, and what you can do to protect your data.
Over the last several weeks, we saw what has now become the usual list of successful cyber attacks and data breaches across all industries, with e-commerce, retail and healthcare at the top of the list.
MoviePass
The cybersecurity firm SpiderSilk reported that they found an unencrypted database with millions of records belonging to MoviePass. The data included customers’ credit card numbers, billing information, and expiration dates. MoviePass jumped into action and took the database offline once the breach was discovered, but since it has been public since May of this year, who knows who has seen the data. Subscribers who were affected have been notified and are recommended to notify their credit card holder and request a new card. Read more.
State Farm
State Farm, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States, reported a data breach in the beginning of the month. The number of affected customers has not been disclosed to the public, but a number of usernames and passwords were collected by a hacker. Those affected were notified via email, but best practice states that all State Farm customers should update their username and password information as a precaution. This data breach will cost State Farm a large amount of money associated to investigations, fines, increased security practices, and reputation. Make sure you are protecting your data to prevent these unnecessary business expenses. Read more.
Poshmark
The popular used clothing marketplace confirmed a data breach at the beginning of the month. An unauthorized third party stole usernames, passwords and account information including gender, and city data. Affected users were sent emails and push notifications through the company’s app notifying them of the data breach and what next steps should be taken. The exact number of affected users has not been reported but there are over 50 million users of Poshmark, which would mean this could be a very costly cyberattack for the company. Read more.
Ohio’s Eye Care Associates
This healthcare ransomware attack is one of the more common attacks we see in the field. The eyecare firm’s systems were locked down and they were not able to properly run their operations for a number of hours. After contacting their third party IT business, the ransomware was detected and a new environment was created for the business to run through. Ransomware attacks can be very costly for small businesses. Read more in this article about other healthcare providers and their struggles with recovering critical patient data and the cost of downtime. Read more.
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