With years of experience in the technology industry, headlines about cyber attacks and data breaches stand out to me. 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.
This past month we saw a number of successful cyber attacks and data breaches across all industries, the largest being the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Quest Diagnostics.
It was reported that data collected by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has been stolen by unknown cyber attackers. Among the stolen data includes photos of people’s license plates, passports and facial recognition images. The number of images stolen and how many people affected has not been released. This is a major data breach that could affect millions of people. With technology becoming more and more advanced, the security of our technology needs to advance as well. Read More.
Hackers attacked Evite, the online invitations and social planning company, obtaining their users personal data. The hackers, known as “Gnosticplayers,” put the data for sale on the dark web. The data included full names, IP addresses, email addresses and account passwords. Luckily, social security numbers and financial data was not stolen. This is another example of the importance of monitoring your network. Read More.
If you have had a blood test, it may have been sent to Quest Diagnostics. 12 million Quest Diagnostic patients data was exposed in a third party data breach. Their third party vendor, American Medical Collection Agency, reported to them that hackers gained access to their internal systems and retrieved data including date of birth, social security number, and addresses. An external forensics team was hired to investigate the breach which would be very costly for any company. This is why it is important to protect your data from these kinds of cyber security threats. Read More.
An epidemic is happening to small business as their websites are marked as easy targets. Many online, e-commerce sites, rely on their web-providers heavily. It is reported that 43% of small businesses were victims to data breaches tracked from November 1, 2017 to October 31, 2018. There are multiple steps small business owners can take to protect their business such as protecting your data against malware and using a DNS security tool to block suspicious sites. Your security tools are only as good as the data they receive, so make sure you are TAPing those links with a Garland Technology Network TAP. Read More
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