Right at this moment a cyber breach, whether it is hacking, theft or a cyber attack, are happening somewhere, right now in the world. In fact, there is a new online map by Norse that lets you watch in real time as it happens.  Hard to believe the absolute magnitude and depth of these breaches into our personal, professional and business worlds. Let’s examine what a data breach is, what the different types include, and what are the latest statistics on these types of cyber issues.
A data breach is commonly defined as the unlawful and unauthorized acquisition of personal, professional or business information that compromises the security, confidentiality, or integrity of the information. For businesses who keep financial, personal and credit card records stored online or on their hard drives or storage facilities it is critical to take steps to safeguard against these types of breaches.
Most breaches fall into one of three categories including: human errors, system glitches, or malicious or criminal attacks. Human errors could include delivering information to the wrong email address, disposing of information improperly or losing an unencrypted laptop, cellphone or storage device such as a USB key. A system glitch is a sudden, unexpected and usually temporary malfunction in a computer system or network. System glitches can include software failures, programming errors, identity or authentication failures (wrongful access) and/or data recovery failures. Finally, the largest category that breaches fall into is the malicious or criminal attacks.  These could include: theft, Phishing, Pharming, attacks on web applications, payment card skimmers, viruses, worms and Trojan Horses to name a few.
For the latest visual on the most recent cyber attacks in 2015 and the millions of pieces of data that were compromised follow the link to the World’s Biggest Data Breaches by Information is Beautiful. If you feel your company may need to review the systems you have in place for your business or personal security please contact M & H Consulting.