TRICARE in Trouble Again- More Lawsuits to Face
The modern enterprises with their digital presence handle a variety of digital data from structured data, textual data such as reports, contracts and emails besides technical drawings, and multimedia. The most dangerous threats faced by them today are therefore the leakage of confidential data. Defined as an unauthorized transfer of sensitive data from an organization to an unauthorized external destination, data leakage brings with it financial and personal damage.
According to the annual study conducted by Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a compromised customer record can cost the enterprise anywhere from 4 to 156 USD. Further, leaked customer data leads to loss of reputation, customer abandonment and even fines, settlements and compensation fees. While the earlier data breaches at Sony PlayStation compromised 77 million user accounts, the recent one compromised 25 million.
Experts warn Big Businesses to Learn from Sony Pictures ‘Epic Nightmare’ Hack
Enterprises make use of different methods to detect and prevent leakage of each type of data. However, accidents such as that occurred at Sony have caused customers to turn to their competitors. Security experts therefore warn big businesses to learn from the Sony’s ‘Epic Nightmare’ Hack which broke last month when a group operating under the #GOP attempted to blackmail the firm. The cyber criminals hacked into Sony’s computer systems and paralyzed their operations and tapped into their trove of hypersensitive data. As an aftermath was the steady flow of revelations which included top employees’ salaries and nasty emails shared across various sites and lead to the former employees’ suing the company for data breach.
Security experts are of the opinion that enterprises need to invest more in their network security without being too concerned about the costs inferred. For Sony Corp. cleaning up the mess from the latest attack is going to cost millions. Enterprises need to be well prepared to respond to attacks with regular backups. Monitoring network traffic, ensuring use of updated versions of operating systems and applications and use of firewalls will help to protect valuable data. However, with Sony’s case being one wherein the intruders stole more than 25 gigabytes of sensitive data on tens of thousands of Sony employees, including Social Security numbers, medical information, name, location, employee ID, network user name, base salary and date of birth of more than 6,800 individuals. However, the endless leaks and crazy details emerging points to the fact that attacker had gained access to unknown number of internal systems at Sony.
The hack estimated to have cost Sony $100 million was a result of their security loopholes. Vulnerability monitoring and risk assessment have to be continuous. To avoid such situations, enterprises can deploy cloud based solutions for IT security and compliance management, vulnerability analysis and risk management. Aegify, a flagship product effectively addresses risk management, IT security and compliance. Offered as Software-as-a-service, this solution targets small, medium and large enterprises and is an easy-to-use cost-effective solution.
Related posts
