According to a survey that was conducted by The Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of data leakages has declined in the first half of 2020 and the number of victims has decreased by 66% compared to last year.
But you should not let your guard down just because the number of cases has gone down. The pandemic that began this year has led to a surge in the use of remote access, and there were incidents in which hackers were aiming for data leaks. In fact, there have been numerous phishing and data leakage this entire year.
Today, let’s look at some data leakage incidents that happened in the first half of 2020.
1.MGM Hotel – (cloud server information exposed)
The hacking of MGM Hotel was known to the world when 140 million customers’ personal information was being sold on the dark web. However, the hotel kept the data leakage incident private until the sensitive information was being traded. It contained the customer’s name, day of birth, phone number, e-mail, and address.
2.Celebrity Twitter accounts (access rights management issue)
Have you ever imagined Obama’s Twitter account being hacked? I bet no one would have believed the accounts of famous people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk would experience data leaks all at the same time. That is why this incident was a shock to all of us. During July of this year, a teenager hacked into celebrities’ Twitter accounts and posted false postings by impersonating them. He took more than 130 million won in digital assets.
3.Marriott Hotel (administrator account management issue)
Marriott Hotel, one of the world’s largest hotel groups experienced massive personal information leakage shortly after the MGM hotel incident. Marriott announced that two employees might have accessed customer information using their login authority. Less than two years after the data leakage incident of 5.2 million customers, it happened again.
4.Healthcare companies (ransomware attacks)
Due to the spread of COVID-19 worldwide, the healthcare sector has become the major target of hackers. In particular, a lot of ransomware has hit hospitals, medical research centers, and hackers have even targeted patients. According to Security Boulevard, more than 100 cyberattacks were reported in the first quarter of 2020. It’s estimated that more than 2.5 million people would have been affected by personal data leakage.
5.BigFooty and Webcam Platform Database (database management issue)
BigFooty, a community for Australian football fans, was collecting personal information that includes personal messages, IP addresses, and GPS data in their database. What’s more shocking is that one webcam platform collected over 10 billion customer data in their database and left it unsecured.
Conclusion
It is almost 2021, meaning it is time for your company to wrap up the rest of 2020 and prepare for 2021 by checking if your internal or customer information is being protected properly. Although the number of cyberattacks related to data leakage has been fewer this year, hackers are always waiting for the right timing to steal your sensitive information. Carelessness will lead companies and individuals to great damage, and it will cost you more than you can imagine to fix it. To prevent malicious packets from entering your server, adopting a firewall can help. For proper protection of your database, encryption is needed and for administrator account management an authentication security solution is required. As mentioned above, data leakage does not only occur in one place. It can happen in any vulnerable area of your company’s network. It would be best for you to check where the most vulnerable area is and consider adopting a solution that can help your company. If you want to wrap up your 2020 and prepare for 2021 with Cloudbric’s web application firewall, click the link! www.cloudbric.com/website-security