Because of our increasingly dependent relationship with technology and the internet, data breaches have become a significant concern for both individuals and organizations. In this day and age, having an understanding of what happens during a data breach and what steps can be taken to prevent it is absolutely necessary. Within the scope of this piece, we will investigate the problem of data breaches in greater depth and supply you with the knowledge you require to safeguard yourself.
What exactly is a data breach, though?
A data breach occurs when an unauthorized person gains access to sensitive information stored on a computer or network. This information can include personal and financial details. This information could then be used for fraudulent purposes, such as stealing someone’s identity or perpetrating fraud. Hacking, threats from insiders, theft in physical form, and phishing scams are some of the many ways that sensitive data can be compromised and exposed.
What Consequences Might Result from the Theft of Your Data?
Another type of security breach occurs when criminals get their hands on a company’s customer list, in its entirety or in part. The outcome is the same regardless of whether they gain access to a database online by hacking into it or by breaking into an office and stealing a paper list. The best-case scenario is that they only obtain information about you that is not particularly sensitive, such as your name, address, phone number, and email address. It is correct that they have the ability to sell that information to data aggregators and brokers. They might obtain a list of your purchases, which is also something that the brokers are interested in.
It is possible that the data that was stolen included your credit card number; however, you should not be as concerned about this as you might at first believe. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) protocol, which has been around for a long time, defines the security of credit card transactions in excruciating detail. The protocol is effective in the vast majority of cases, provided that businesses follow the rules. In any case, you won’t be responsible for paying for unauthorized charges made to your credit card (at least in the US). It is important to be aware that your credit card details will most likely be stored with a third-party provider and not with the business you paid.
Online retailers and other websites are responsible for keeping your account information secure. Many of them do an excellent job, encrypting all of the data they store and using techniques known as Zero Knowledge that enable them to validate your login password without ever knowing or storing it. However, if a website stores your password in an insecure manner and it is exposed as a result of a breach, you will no longer have control over that account. Depending on the kind of website, hackers can place orders, make bank transfers, send emails in your name, and even lock you out of the account by changing the password.
It will get even worse, in two different ways. To begin, it’s likely that you reuse the same password across multiple websites because you haven’t yet gotten around to enlisting the assistance of a password manager. Hackers are aware of this, and they check stolen credentials immediately against those of other popular websites. Second, if they gain access to your email account, they will most likely be able to utilize the standard mechanism for resetting passwords in order to gain access to additional of your online accounts. A security breach that reveals your passwords can quickly escalate into a full-scale theft of your identity.
Even when it’s not implemented perfectly, Zero Knowledge authentication creates significant roadblocks for malicious actors who are attempting to circumvent security measures. When businesses, on the other hand, choose to ignore this technology, the results can be catastrophic. The specifics are still being worked out, but it appears that LastPass’s sibling company, GoTo, was also the victim of a data breach, with customers of multiple product lines, including encrypted backups, having their information compromised. According to a statement released by the company (Opens in a new window), “a threat actor exfiltrated an encryption key for a portion of the encrypted backups.” [Citation needed] You got that right. With Zero Knowledge, a company never saves or views the one-of-a-kind decryption password for each individual user. However, it appears that the single password was stored in close proximity to the encrypted data in this instance, which is analogous to writing the combination of a safe on the door of the safe.
The Repercussions of Violating a Data Security Policy
A data breach may have severe repercussions, not only for individuals but also for the organizations that it affects. Identity theft and financial hardships are two potential outcomes for individuals that can result from the disclosure of personal and financial information. Data breaches can cause organizations to suffer damage to their reputations, a loss of trust from their customers, and financial losses.
In addition to the direct repercussions of a data breach, there is also the possibility of indirect repercussions occurring. For instance, in order for organizations to fulfill regulatory requirements and prevent further data breaches, they may be required to make expensive investments in new security measures. In addition, a company may face legal action and regulatory fines as a consequence of a data breach, which places additional strain on its financial resources.
How do breaches in data security occur?
As was just discussed, there are a variety of different ways in which data can be compromised. Let’s look at each of these in a little bit more depth:
- Hacking is the process by which malicious individuals or groups exploit vulnerabilities in software or use malicious software to gain access to sensitive information that is stored on a computer or network. Hackers can use these sophisticated techniques.
- Threats from the Inside: Employees or contractors who work for the company and have access to sensitive information may expose it intentionally or unintentionally. This can happen if you send sensitive information to an unauthorized individual or if you leave a laptop containing sensitive information in a public place where others can access it.
- Theft of Computers or Other Devices Containing Sensitive Information: Computers or other devices that store sensitive information can be stolen, which puts the information at risk. This can take place as a result of unfortunate events such as the thievery of a laptop or the misplacing of a smartphone.
- Phishing: Phishing scams are emails or websites that appear to be from legitimate sources but are actually designed to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information. Phishing scams are also known as spear phishing. This can occur when fake login pages are used or fake social media profiles are created.
What Steps Can I Take Following a Data Breach?
Although it may be tempting to dismiss the most recent news as yet another uninteresting data breach, it is important that you pay attention to it. Do you have a connection, such as an account, to the entity that had its security breached? How severe is the security flaw exactly? Sometimes, a news article will be more explicit about the situation, perhaps stating that the only information that was compromised was customers’ email and physical addresses (phew! ), or that the breach involved specific financial information. In other accounts, you’ll find a lot less specific information, either because the affected company isn’t aware of the full extent of the damage yet or because they don’t want to acknowledge it.
One thing you can’t do is wait for an entity whose security has been breached to tell you whether or not you were affected by the breach. A breach of this nature is embarrassing and expensive, and victim companies, out of concern for their legal position, are very careful about what information they disclose. A skilled attorney may be able to turn a statement such as “Sorry, we lost your data” into the basis of a class action lawsuit in certain circumstances. Since this is the case, you should just assume that the data breach included your information.
If you have an account with a company that had a security breach, you should change the password. Now! It makes no difference whether you are certain that you were exposed to the virus or not. Just do it. Do not be one of the one in six people in the United States who do nothing in response to a breach in security. Utilize a secure and one-of-a-kind password that your password manager crafted.
Do not stop there; instead, search your password manager for any other websites where you may have used the same password and change it on those sites as well. This is a time-sensitive action that must be taken. Because identity thieves cannot access every stolen account at the same time, you have a better chance of beating them if you move quickly.
Check to see if multi-factor authentication (also known as MFA) is an option while the affected website (or websites) are still open in your browser. MFA is the most effective defense you have against account takeover. Enable it, if available. Now, in order to log in, you will need both your password and an additional factor, which could be an authenticator app on your mobile device or a physical security key. Without that additional factor, a password that has been stolen is completely useless.
Even after you have changed your password, you should continue to monitor the affected organization for some time. Log in to your account and verify that any pending orders or actions are a result of your actions. Check to see if the company is providing victims with any kind of compensation for their ordeal. It’s not out of the question to offer you a free subscription to a credit monitoring service. Following the data breach that occurred at Experian in 2015, victims were offered two years of free credit monitoring and identity resolution services from the company.
Unfortunately, someone broke into the vault of your password manager. Things get especially hairy if the affected company didn’t precisely follow Zero-Knowledge protocols, or if you protected your passwords with a weak or reused master password. Both scenarios are particularly likely to result in a breach of security. Because previously stolen information can still be accessed using the old password, changing your password won’t stop the thieves from trying to break the security on your account. Adding an MFA after the fact is subject to the same constraints. Your only real option is to switch to a password manager that is more reliable and then rapidly generate new passwords that are completely unique for each and every secure website you use.
What Steps Can You Take to Ensure Your Safety?
As was mentioned, credential stuffing attacks involve nothing more than running a script that automatically and swiftly checks the most common passwords against multiple accounts. If you are trying to remember your passwords on your own, there is a good chance that you are choosing from a pool of the weakest passwords or that you are using the same password everywhere. That is a significant issue. Immediately begin using a password manager after you have obtained one. Pick the one that places a significant amount of emphasis on security, particularly Zero Knowledge security (Opens in a new window). When you have zero knowledge, nobody else besides you — not the password company, not a disgruntled employee, and not even the NSA — will be able to open your vault.
Pick a password manager that provides you with a report that can actually be used to improve your password security. If you already possess such a tool, you should put it to good use. Change any passwords that aren’t secure to something more robust. If the report reveals that you have used the same password for multiple sites, you should create a fresh password for each one. You can’t afford to put this off because you have no idea where the next breach will occur.
You’ve probably been told this before, but I’m going to repeat it anyway. Create a lengthy, difficult, and easy-to-remember password to guard the treasure trove of your passwords. The next step is to implement multi-factor authentication. If you have the option, opting for authentication that relies on a code being texted to you rather than one that uses a smartphone app or a physical security key is the better choice. After you have finished those tasks, it would be a good idea to go back and enable multi-factor authentication for every account that is capable of doing so.
The likes of shopping websites are not allowed to disclose any personal information because they do not have any. Even though it may be more convenient to let the website save your shipping information and credit card details, you should always choose not to do so if given the opportunity. You always have the option of using your password manager to fill in those details whenever they are required. Also, if a particular field isn’t specifically marked as required, you don’t have to fill it out.
Unless you completely cut off contact with the digital world, people will be able to find pieces of your personal information all over the internet. A number of the websites that have access to your sensitive information do not protect it as thoroughly as they should, which frequently leads to a security breach. You won’t be able to stop something like this from happening, but you can reduce the damage that could be done to you by adhering to our recommendations, and you can increase the likelihood that you’ll be able to recover by paying attention when a security breach takes place and acting quickly.
You can safeguard yourself against a data breach’s negative effects by taking any of the available precautions. These are the following:
- Make Use of Strong Passwords Choose secure, one-of-a-kind passwords for each of your online accounts, and make sure to update them on a regular basis. A secure password should be difficult to guess, include a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols, and contain at least two different types of characters.
- Enable Two-Factor Authentication Two-factor authentication provides an additional layer of protection for your online accounts by necessitating a second form of identification, such as a code sent to your phone. This can be done by enabling two-factor authentication. Because of this, it will be more challenging for dishonest individuals to access your sensitive information.
- Be Cautious When Sharing Personal Information You should try to limit the amount of personal information that you share online and you should only share it with sources that you can trust. This includes refraining from disclosing sensitive information about yourself, such as your full name, date of birth, and specifics regarding your finances.
- Maintain a Current Software Version: To guard against potential security flaws, it is important to maintain a current version of both the operating system and software on your computer. This contributes to protecting your computer against the most recent security threats.
- Install a Trustworthy Anti-Virus Program on Your Computer To protect your computer from malware and other security risks, you should install a trustworthy anti-virus program. Ensure that your anti-virus software is kept up to date at all times to effectively detect and eliminate the most recent security threats.
- Maintain Frequent Backups of Your Data Maintaining frequent backups of your data, such as documents and photos, can help protect it if it is compromised due to a data breach or some other type of security threat. You might want to think about using an online backup service in order to store your data in a safe place.
- Always Use Caution When Receiving Messages or Emails: Always use caution whenever receiving messages or emails from unknown individuals or organizations. When coming from a source that you do not fully trust, you should not click on links or download attachments.
- Utilize a Virtual Private Network, also known as a VPN: If you are going to be accessing the internet through a public Wi-Fi network, you should use a VPN in order to encrypt your internet connection and prevent sensitive information from being snooped on.
Conclusion
Data breaches are a major concern for both individuals and businesses in this day and age due to the prevalence of digital technology. You can reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes and risks associated with a data breach by first gaining an understanding of what occurs during a data breach and then taking the necessary precautions to protect yourself. You can contribute to the continued safety of your sensitive information by adhering to the best practices that are outlined in this article and reading it carefully.
