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Security: Data Continues to Leak from Large Numbers of Data Breaches
Businesses and governments of all sizes have become targets of computer hacking. A Verizon security report notes that “from pubs to public agencies, mom-and-pops to multi-nationals, nobody is immune.”.
A report by the Ponemon Institute found that small businesses and health care facilities are especially vulnerable to attacks. 55 percent of small businesses have experienced a data breach, and of those, 53 percent had experienced multiple breaches. 94 percent of healthcare organizations have had at least one data breach in the past two years at an annual cost of $6.78 billion annually. Despite laws in nearly all states that businesses must notify individuals when data breaches occur, only about one-third of affected businesses follow through with notifications.
Good security plans need two central components: the first is a plan to do everything to possible to prevent and safeguard against a breach from ever occurring, and the second, is to limit, should a breach actually occur, the amount of data which can be lost or compromised.
Michael Bruemmer, vice president with Experian Data Breach Resolution, said that “Real companies involved [with data breaches] are still not having a data breach plan. It’s amazing to me that we still have companies that have lost business. More than three-fourths of those expect to, or have had, material loss of customers or business or brand recognition. They get it and understand it, but their approach hasn’t changed that much.”
While computer attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the Ponemon report found that the main causes of data loss are more often associated with lost or stolen computers and human error.
Systems that are most worrisome are those that house consolidated or aggregated information. They stand to lose the most. Ericka Chickowski writes for DarkReading that “Information that is pooled together for efficiency’s sake can also make a thief’s life that much easier.” Chicago lawyer Joseph Siprut said that “When information is aggregated, it poses substantial security risks, and yet the precautions that should accompany these data treasure troves have not really kept pace with the level of information collected. That’s why you can’t go one week without reading a newspaper article about some new data breach.”
