Tech Talk – Data Breaches

I chose the topic of data breaches because internet security is among one of the most talked about topics in this day and age. Data breaches are usually a company’s biggest fear, as a data breach can cause a company to lose millions of dollars and the trust of their clients. Data breaches are very common, and some of the most well-known brands have had information stolen due to security flaws in their firewalls.

Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data breach was among one of the most well-known because it was later used with the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections. Cambridge Analytica was able to obtain information from more than 29 million Facebook users (Leskin, 2018). The information obtained included “locations, contact details, relationship statuses, recent searches, and devices used to log in” (Leskin, 2018). The data was later tied, used for the U.S. Presidential Elections. The information aquired was used to advertise and influence individuals’ choices for their presidential votes. The company was able to create target ads about the republican candidate, Donald Trump, for the elections and distribute them among those whose data was obtained, as well as their Facebook friends.

Yahoo! is another major company to have several data breaches in their history. The biggest breach for Yahoo! to this day is the data breach from 2013, where approximately 3 billion accounts were affected and/or compromised (Youn, 2018). Yahoo! had yet another data breach only a year later, with over 500 million accounts affected (Youn, 2018). Throughout both data breaches, the information obtained included security questions, birth dates, back-up emails, passwords, and other personal information within the Yahoo! servers. The data breaches were not brought up to public knowledge up until the sale of Yahoo! to Verizon Wireless, which was finalized in 2017.

 T-Mobile’s data breach was fairly recent, happening less than one year ago, on August 20, 2018. From this data breach came the loss of customer information which included encrypted passwords, customer data, account numbers, billing information, and email addresses (Leskin, 2018). There were more than 2 million T-Mobile customers affected by this breach, all through a simple hack done to the T-Mobile servers. With this came huge responsibility and backlash to T-Mobile because T-Mobile deals with confidential customer information including social security numbers.

Target, a major U.S. retailer, was also a victim of a breach in the 2013. More than 40 million customers were affected in the breach, some of which were costly for the customers (CNNBusiness, 2017). The hackers were able to acquire customer card and bank information by hacking Target’s card systems. This affected customers who purchased form the retailer using their bank cards. The hack was costly for the retailer, agreeing to pay customers affected a total of $10 million. This did not include the costs associated with the investigation of the hack, as well as the cost to strengthen their security measures and firewalls.

Data breaches can be disastrous and extremely expensive for both the customer and the company. Those businesses affected are usually willing to offer identity theft monitoring to the clients as a way to show their acknowledgement and want to make sure the customers are taken care of. After a major breach, customers are usually very skeptical using the internet for purchases, which is why companies tend to improve their security, making it safer for anyone and everyone doing business with the company. We are seeing a rise in jobs for cyber security and information system professionals due to all the security issues and data breaches occurring with the Internet of Things and all the technological advancements.

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