What can we learn from the last decade to help protect our finances and reputation from fraud and cyber threats.
According to Security Magazine, 2019 was tracking to be the worst year for data breaches on record. Compared to the 2018 Q3 report, the total number of breaches was up 33% and the total number of records exposed doubled, up 112%.
Here are just a few of those breaches:
- In January 2019, ZDnetreported that an online casino group leaked information on more than 108 million bets, including details about customers’ personal information, deposits and withdrawals.
- Canva, a graphic-design tool website, suffered a data breach that affected 139 million users. The data exposed included customer usernames, real names, email addresses, passwords and city and country information.
- In April 2019, UpGuard security researchersrevealed that two third-party developed Facebook app datasets were exposed to the public internet.
- In October, Troia and Diachenko reported a trove of data exposed and easily accessible to the public on an unsecured server, which contained 4 terabytes of PII, or about 4 billion records. A total count of unique people across all data sets reached more than 1.2 billion people, making this one of the largest data leaks from a single source organization in history. The leaked data contained names, email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIN and Facebook profile information.
So what industries are most at risk for data breach in 2020?
Since financial, health, and government information are the most likely to be stolen, the industries that manage and depend on this information are most at risk.
Healthcare – almost one in eight Americans have had their medical information exposed. A key motivator for hackers to breach healthcare institutions is financial gain. Stolen records can be used to gain unauthorized access to medical programs or get prescription medications.
Tourism – The tourism industry is growing. Hotels collect payment information and private data from customers. Yet they tend to invest a limited amount of resources in computer security and user-based risk mitigation systems. Sensitive data ends up being easily accessible to hotel employees and third-party vendors.
Public Sector – Government data ends up stolen because of espionage or financial gain. Some people attack government databases just for fun – we’ve all heard stories about Russian hackers.
Retail – Trade has always been subject to fraud. Our digital century brings digital fraud tools to this industry. Retailers often suffer from DoS attacks on their websites and card skimmers in their stores.
Finance – Banks are constantly under threat: financial services companies are breached 300 times more frequently than companies in any other industry. And in order to penetrate a bank security system, hackers use much more elaborate methods.
The efforts to enhance cyber-security and reduce fraud is part of most industry conversations, but the threat is ongoing and the criminals continue to stay one step ahead. Our digital world is increasingly convenient, but too many cut corners can lead to exposure and risk. So, what can you do to protect your customers, members, employees and even your community?
Identity protection delivers peace of mind, but it also educates consumers on their risks, ongoing scams and technology as it advances to protect us all from fraud.
How do you determine if you have the right partner for Identity Protection? KII Consulting can help.