Discuss about the Recent Computer Data Breaches and Solutions.
According to research, cyber-crime damages are estimated to cost the globe about $ 6 trillion every year by 2021 (Morgan, 2018). The projection is an increase from $3 trillion incurred in 2015. This clearly shows that cyber security costs all over the world will continue to significantly increase as a result of an increased cyber-crime. A single data breach case is estimated to cost a company over 3.8 million. In the US alone, over 40 percent organizations have heard a breach in the last year (Morgan, 2018) . The U.S government in 2016 spent a staggering $28 billion on cyber-security. More was spent in 2017, and more is expected to be disbursed this year (Mason, 2018). A new study by Symantec shows that ransomware attacks increased by over 35 percent in 2017 across the world and is predicted to only keep growing. The truth is that technology is developing at an alarming rate. With technology developing, so are hackers and their hacking techniques. Data breaches tracked by end of June 2017 increased by more 700 records and the number will keep rising. This report discusses details of some of the data breaches and scandals that have occurred in the last 5 years. Several measures and solutions for data breaches have been discussed and finally a conclusion.
Every other day, organizations face the risk of experiencing a cyber-attack. In May 2017, a computer worm dubbed ‘WannaCry’ hit the Internet and affected computer systems in over 150 countries worldwide (BBCNews, 2017). WannaCry worm rapidly spread through the Internet, affected outdated Windows 7 Operating Systems and encrypted victim’s computer systems. The perpetrators demanded a ransom in form of Bitcoin in order to decrypt the encoded data and information. The first attack occurred the first week of May 2017 and began by infecting government and business systems in Ukraine before spreading out to over 200,000 computers across the globe. Some countries were affected more than the rest including Russia and European Union states. To stop the attack and slow down its effect, a kill switch was developed by security researcher. The attack was linked to a hacker group from Korea (Riley & Burke, 2017). According to (Rizkallah, 2017), hackers behind the attack are said to have manipulated a tool belonging to NSA to design and develop the malware.
In February 2014, a retailer specializing in credit card payments, Neiman Marcus experienced a cyber-attack (Elgin, et al., 2014). Hackers were able to intrude and access customer credit card records belonging to the company. For 8 months, the hackers remained undetected, set off 60,000 alerts that sent notifications and gained access to cash registers. At first, it was said that approximately 1 million customer records were accessed but a recent update showed that about 9000 customer cards were accessed.
2017 was just a year full of cyber-attacks reports. Based in New York City, Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center was penetrated and thousands of medical records illegally accessed. The data breach exposed over 7000 patients’ records between 2014 and 2017 (Cohen, 2017). The leaked data included patient names, physical addresses, religion, social security numbers, diagnosis reports, HIV statuses, domestic violence reports, addiction history and sexual assault reports (Cohen, 2017). The attack happened after a server used to store and transfer files wasn’t properly secured and thus left in a vulnerable state. A report indicated that the server had been left in a misconfigured state and hence was highly exposed (Sehgal, 2017) . It was thus very easy for a hacker to gain access and expose records. There was no record as to whether the exposed records were used inapproprietary.
Target a big retailer store also suffered a major data breach attack involving millions of customer debit and credit cards in November 2013 (Kassner, 2015). Staff at the retailer discovered the data breach and quickly reported it to the U.S. Justice Department by December. Soon after, the issue was posted by a cyber-security blogger and was said to have started on a Black Friday in a busiest shopping period. According to Target, debit and credit cards of about 110 million shoppers, who visited the retail shop at the time of the attack were compromised. The attackers accessed and stole data with a capacity of 11 gigabytes.
Recently, Facebook was involved in a data breach scandal. The social media site allowed a third party app from Analytica, an analyst firm to access user information belonging to millions of Facebook users (Murdock, 2018). In 2014, Analytica developed a personality test for users whose motive was to harvest chunks of user data without their knowledge. By allowing the application to work, Facebook thus gave consent to the firm to access and collect information including location, likes and dislikes from users for use in their political agendas. When a user installs a Facebook related app, they basically give permission to the app to access your profile including names, pictures, account ID, friends, gender, location and more. Facebook and other social media platforms do not have clear procedures as to how they implement data privacy. They therefore continue to collect copious amounts of data including user attitudes and behaviors (Murdock, 2018). With numerous applications running on the platforms, user data can be accessed and exploited without their knowledge.
Technological innovations are on the rise. The Internet growth is staggering and technologies including cloud computing, social media, telemedicine, online shopping, remote etc. have made it possible for many people across the world to access and embrace digital revolution. Nevertheless, such growth and developments has led to the increase in cyber-attacks with intruders trying to gain access to network systems to commit fraud or steal data and information. As a result, cyber-attacks and data breaches are in the rise including the ones mentioned above. It is not all bad news however since there are some measures and precautions that both individual users and businesses can take to protect themselves from cyber-attacks. Some of the measures that can be taken include the following:
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that cyber-attacks are on the rise in the modern world today. Cyber security is thus going to expand and become critical for modern enterprises and the world at large. They have been used to commit fraud involving millions, used to influence major national election results and commit identity theft. The fight against cyber-attacks should therefore not be underestimated. Some companies hit by cyber-attacks have never been able to catch up and some are destroyed utterly to non-existence. As such, it is very imperative to guard against attacks by implementing some of the measures indicated above both for personal and business related accounts and operations.
References
BBCNews, 2017. Cyber-attack: Europol says it was unprecedented in scale. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39907965
Cohen, J. K., 2017. 7,000+ people affected in New York hospital data breach: 4 things to know. [Online]
Available at: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/7-000-people-affected-in-new-york-hospital-data-breach-4-things-to-know.html
Elgin, B., Dune, L. & Michael, R., 2014. Neiman Marcus Hackers Set Off 60,000 Alerts While Bagging Credit Card Data. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-21/neiman-marcus-hackers-set-off-60-000-alerts-while-bagging-credit-card-data
[Accessed 1 May 2018].
Kassner, M., 2015. Anatomy of the Target data breach: Missed opportunities and lessons learned. [Online]
Available at: https://www.zdnet.com/article/anatomy-of-the-target-data-breach-missed-opportunities-and-lessons-learned/
[Accessed 1 May 2018].
Mason, J., 2018. Cyber Security Statistics. [Online]
Available at: https://thebestvpn.com/cyber-security-statistics-2018/
[Accessed 1 May 2018].
Morgan, S., 2018. Top 5 cybersecurity facts, figures and statistics for 2018. [Online]
Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3153707/security/top-5-cybersecurity-facts-figures-and-statistics.html
[Accessed 1 May 2018].
Murdock, J., 2018. FACEBOOK DATA BREACH: HOW TO CHECK WHICH THIRD-PARTY APPS YOU HAVE CONNECTED. [Online]
Available at: https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-data-breach-how-check-which-third-party-apps-you-have-connected-850564
[Accessed 1 May 2018].
Riley, C. & Burke, S., 2017. Intelligence agencies link WannaCry cyberattack to North Korea. [Online]
Available at: https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/16/technology/wannacry-north-korea-intelligence-link/index.html?iid=EL
[Accessed 1 May 2018].
Rizkallah, J., 2017. The Cybersecurity Regulatory Crackdown. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/08/25/the-cybersecurity-regulatory-crackdown/#4c8f13674573
Sehgal, S., 2017. Over 7,000 Patients’ Data Compromised in Bronx Lebanon Hospital Data Breach. [Online]
Available at: https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/business/7000-patients-data-compromised-bronx-lebanon-hospital-data-breach/
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