As more companies have made use of technology and have been offering digital services, they have been facing the issue of data breaches which has negatively impacted their businesses. During recent years, data breaches have been high in number. Only in 2011 there were 535 breaches reported in the US, which involved 30.4 million sensitive records (Caldwell, 2012). In 2012, The New York State Electric & Gas Co. in Rochester, New York experienced a data breach involving 1.8 million files containing people’s personal information, such as social security numbers, and bank accounts. Utah Department of Technology Services also experienced an attack by hackers which exposed 780,000 patient files (Arma International, 2012). Important information …show more content…
About 73 percent of breaches happen from outside the organization (Patel-Predd, 2008). Companies today invest large amounts of money in data security in order to protect their information. However, data breaches still continue to happen and the number of them is steadily increasing in small and big companies, which often are found in situations where they have to decide about what changes they should make in order to avoid future data breaches.
2 Problem
2.1 Problem statement
There is no generally available source of information that lists a range of options for companies to take necessary steps for avoiding data breaches from reoccurring.
2.2 Significance of the problem and potential benefits
Some companies continue to experience data breaches more than one time, even if they have already put security measures in place. After already making investments in data security, it becomes difficult for companies to decide what the next steps will be for preventing future data breaches. There are different strategies published regarding this issue. However, there is no document that provides a range of options that companies can choose based on their situation after a data breach.
As data breaches occur in companies that have already invested large amounts of money in data security, it is often a challenge to make decisions about future investments that would improve their data security and avoid data breaches.
The first point of analysis is related to National Data Breach reporting which main goal is to protect consumers against identity theft and incentivize businesses for better cyber security. Businesses are required to inform the consumers if the intruder had access to the consumers’ personal information in order to prevent further damage or loss. The information security policy of State of Maryland is set forth to provide any data breach incident
Data security; affinion security center augments data breach solution. (2012). Information Technology Newsweekly, , 91. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/926634711?accountid=458
This case study, written in 2009 is not the only case where a major data breach has occurred within organizations. In the late 2011 Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) was breached impacting up to 77 million user’s accounts including data on names, address and possibly credit card details. In late 2013 Target had a cyber-attack that compromised a large quantity of its data and had 110 million accounts compromised. Finally in September 2014 Apple had their iCloud server breached by hacking that compromised all the users of the online server. These occurrences still have some unanswered questions and several experts have yet to decipher the actual reason as to why the security breach occurred.
Gatzlaff, K. M., & McCullough, K. A. (2010). The effect of data breaches on shareholder wealth. Risk Management and Insurance Review, 13(1), 61-83.
In the Data breach Investigation report of 2012, the compromised records 174 million security incidents from all over the world were analyzed also the investigation confirmed 855 data breaches. The attacks were carried out from 19 different nations and affected all kinds of organizations small and large.
The Goodwill breach is a sore point for many security researchers as the 3rd party POS vendor has not yet revealed how the attackers compromised their environment. Unfortunately, this is the case in many data breaches over the past several years. Rather than sharing details with the community, organizations instead conceal critical details of the breaches whether out of embarrassment or fear of brand damage. There are also some legal reasons to consider such as protecting customer data and confidentiality of ongoing investigations by law enforcement.
By listening the word itself making many business and people getting afraid of it. Data breach is leaking security information of people or public using different means and which results in compromising the millions and millions of people credit and debit card information 's , health information 's ,Social Security numbers .From the year 2005 to 2014 the data breaches have been increased a lot .Due to this millions of
Although we may not realize it, so much of our lives are online. Whether it is for work or for media consumption, many of us rely on the internet to get through our daily lives. Therefore, one of the most crucial aspects of computer science as technology moves forward, is the overall security and safety of the software we use. This can range from programs on our computers or smartphones all the way to the social media websites we use. It seems like we are constantly learning about new data breaches that may have leaked our personal information and what is even more unfortunate is the fact that we are not informed of a majority of these data breaches until months or even years after the incident has occurred.
While all of these technologies have enabled exciting changes and opportunities for businesses, they have also created a unique set of challenges for business managers. Chief among all concerns about technology is the issue of information security. It seems to be almost a weekly occurrence to see a news article about yet another breach of security and loss of sensitive data. Many people will remember high profile data breaches from companies such as T.J Maxx, Boston Market, Sports Authority, and OfficeMax. In the case of T.J. Maxx, a data breach resulted in the loss of more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers. In many of these incidents, the root cause is a lack of adequate security practices within the company. The same technologies that enable managers can also be used against them. Because of this, businesses must take appropriate steps to ensure their data remains secure and their communications remain
The analysis of 2,260 breaches and more than 100,000 incidents at 67 organizations in 82 countries shows that organizations are still failing to address basic issues and well-known attack methods. The (DBIR, 2016) shows, for example, that nearly two-thirds of confirmed data breaches involved using weak, default or stolen passwords. Also shows that most attacks exploit known vulnerabilities that organizations have never patched, despite patches being available for months – or even years – with the top 10 known vulnerabilities accounting for 85% of successful exploit “Organizations should be investing in training to help employees know what they should and shouldn’t be doing, and
The potential of violations can come from numerous sources (Lawrence & Weber, 2011) (Consumer Information). Recently Equifax had a data breach of their customer’s personal information. The hackers accessed the names, social security numbers, birthdates, and addresses of 142 million American consumers (Consumer Information). This is frightening and happens more often that we think. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers executive, ”Cybercrime has emerged as a formidable threat. Over the years millions have fallen victim to theses attacks. In a survey of 583 U.S. companies, 90 percent said that hackers breached their company’s computers over the last twelve months (Lawrence & Weber, 2011). Cyber crimes occur when hackers attempt to damage or destroy a computer network or system of company’s data. Criminals will use one of the most harmful systems around. This system is called a zombie. A zombie is
As the sources and complexity of data breaches continue to increase, so does the cost to organizations. In 2016, the Aberdeen Group estimated the average cost of downtime was $260,000 per hour, a figure that represents a 60% increase from the 2014 average. Even businesses with a 99.9% uptime will lose almost 9 hours a year, which has a potential downtime cost of over $2 million. Combine this with the Ponemon Institute’s finding that the average cost of a breach is $4 million. Improving security is a financial imperative.
Target, Neiman Marcus, and even eBay have been victims of breaches involving their customer’s sensitive information. Identity theft is becoming all too common as entire dossiers of individuals who have done nothing more than purchase something online are shared, sometimes for as little as a dollar ("Follow the Data: Dissecting Data Breaches and Debunking the Myths," 2015). Incidents happen when a company doesn’t maintain physical security of a device, such as a laptop, or when unauthorized individuals obtain access to databases.
Increasingly, information breaches happen because of resentful or dissatisfied employees (Custer, 2010). Presently, the main risk to data’s confidentiality, availability, and integrity within a company is careless treatment or purposeful destruction by in-house
It is important to note that whether an attack is perpetrated by a hacker group, other corporations or individuals, organizations must always prepare adequately through intrusion detection and prevention systems in place. Data breaches can have very devastating business and social impact to large businesses and their customers – the users. For instance, were Cloudflare attacked by a competing company, their trade secrets could have given the opponents ammunition to take them out of the field. In addition, lost data could influence criminal activity if for instance particular client information, for