The biggest Cyber-attacks of 2019 so far

Data breaches and cyber attacks are the new normal.

What can you, as a business owner, learn from some of the biggest companies that have had data breaches?

In this article, we will be outlining some of the most significant attacks in 2019

How these attacks can give you some guidance on the types of IT/Data security, you should be thinking about for your company.

Facebook

Back in April, a third party working on behalf of Facebook left two amazon servers un-secure.  Those servers stored 540 million Facebook user ID’s, account names and interaction data.

The lesson learnt here is that if you have third parties working with company data, you should be asking them how they secure their systems and your data.

Good examples of this are if you outsource your payroll, HR or finance to a third party.

Ask them for a clear overview of the security measures they have in place.

People living with HIV

January saw the Singapore Ministry of Health confirm they had a breach of 14,200 patient records.

While the number is nowhere near the size of other data breaches in 2019, what makes this a serious breach is the nature of the data.

An unknown hacker stole sensitive data that revealed people diagnosed with HIV.

The lesson for us here is that if your company is holding sensitive data, you must take the necessary steps to secure it and have those steps documented.

Toyota

April saw another data breach by the car manufacturer Toyota.  Toyota has not had much luck with their current IT systems as there have been multiple data breaches in Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and  Australia.

Three million customers and employees were affected by this breach.

The lesson here is to be aware of the types of data you have and where it might be stored.

An excellent example of this is you may have a central file server for operational data, but your employee data might be stored on a completely different system.

It’s good practice to document the categories of data you store in your company, where this data is stored and the security measure you have in place.

If you would like further information on how we can help secure your data, please get in touch with us here.