Data Breaches

Hardly a week goes by where another news story hits the airwaves.  Another company has fallen victim to some type of data breach where hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of the company's customers or clients have had their personal data compromised. You ask yourself the question, why does this happen?  Many times, it’s because of a company being complacent with their security policies and practices.  Take the Equifax data breach for an example.  (Review a previous blog post for more information https://www.runetworksafe.com/blog/equifax-security-breach)  Criminal activity in cyberspace can be a very profitable venture.  Security vulnerabilities are constantly surfacing, exposing companies that house your personal data.  Newly discovered exploits many times are sold to criminal organizations, allowing them to hack into compromised systems, even before companies are aware of those exploits.  There is a varying degree of personal information that can be extracted from a data breach.  It depends on the sophistication of the breach, and how and what information a company retains on their databases for each customer or client.  Names, Date of Birth, email addresses, physical home or business addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and credit card information can be extracted from a company’s database, when they fall victim to a data breach.  What can you do to help prevent the damage caused by having your personal data exposed to a criminal organization as the result of a data breach?  The first thing that you should do as an ongoing precaution is utilize a good form of Password Management.  (Refer to another past blog post for more information https://www.runetworksafe.com/blog/password-management)

A very handy web site is available that allows you to check to see if your email account has been compromised by a data breach in the past. The web site is https://haveibeenpwned.com/  By entering your email address, you can determine if you are a victim of a data breach.  You can even be proactive by signing up to be notified if your email address happens to be contained in a future data breach.
 

If you find yourself the victim of a recent data breach, what precautions should you take to prevent your identity and personal information and/or credit card information from falling into a criminal cesspool?   Changing your password on the compromised web site is the first thing you should do.  If you've used the same password on any other web sites that you log into, you need to change those passwords as well.  If your credit card information has been compromised, you need to cancel  your credit card and request a new card to be reissued by your financial institution.  You should also take an added precaution by signing up for credit report monitoring. Identity Theft is another issue that will be covered in a future blog posting, since there is too much information that is required for that topic.