Latest Data Breach News Story

By Alisa Fetic

The breach of Optus' customer database is the latest data breach story to rock the news. The data breach exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of customers, including their names, dates of birth, and phone numbers.

As a result, Optus began notifying customers who may have been affected by the breach. On their website, they posted a statement stating that it is collaborating with the Australian Cyber Security Center to reduce any threats to customers.

Optus also reported the "strange activities" to the Australian Federal Police, and an investigation was launched to determine who has been accessing the data and for what reason.

The company assured its customers that it would provide updates as they become available. They also advised them not to use passports for online identification until the matter is resolved.

Optus also notified its customers to be alert for any fraudulent activity they detected. Furthermore, they should secure their online accounts using two-factor authentication and unique, complicated passwords.

But how could this data breach have been prevented?

How Optus Could Prevent Data Security Breaches

Redaction

Redaction is a way to hide sensitive information from the public view. It is commonly used in the legal and financial industries to protect confidential information that criminals or competitors may use.

Redaction is also used to release information about a client, such as names and addresses, to prevent cyber criminals from learning more about them.

The process can be done manually by hand-writing over the original document or electronically by using computer software like Objective Redact or CaseGuard.

More Ways Optus Could Prevent Data Security Breaches

Install Firewall Software

A firewall protects from hackers by blocking unauthorized attempts to access or modify network data or control systems. It also prevents intruders from using your computer as an entry point into the network or accessing sensitive files on it.

There are two types of firewall software: hardware-based and software-based. Hardware-based firewalls include routers and switches that protect the entire network by restricting all traffic passing through it. Software-based firewalls run on a single computer and can be set up at home or in business premises to separate work and private networks.

Encrypt All Customer Data

Encryption is a process that transforms plain text into cipher text. This transformation prevents someone from viewing or accessing your data without the proper key needed to decrypt it.

In this way, if a hacker were to break into your system and steal passwords, they would not be able to access any other information in the system because all their passwords would be encrypted with that one key.

Encrypting client information helps prevent hackers from gaining access to them while being transmitted between servers and users in a network.

Limit Employee Access to Crucial Company Data

To do this, businesses can implement policies limiting how much access each employee has to critical company data. These policies may include:

A password policy: Allowing employees to log in with a password rather than using their name and social security number (or other personally identifiable information) as their username will help ensure that no unauthorized person can access your system.

Wrap-Up On Optus's Data Breach

Data breaches can have a devastating effect on affected companies, not to mention their customers. In reality, they are one of the biggest threats to the corporate world, yet many companies lack a sufficient defense against them. All it takes is one mistake to let a hacker in, and they can wreak havoc on your data. Companies should take caution by using measures like redaction to ensure their client's data is safe.

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All Amazon Data Breaches - The Mechanics and Takeaways

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It's estimated that the hacking campaign affected roughly 150 million users worldwide after all was said and done. 2014: Allegations of Staff Spying Corporations as big as Amazon are bound to hire a few bad apples every now and then. But even so, are individual employees always to blame when malpractice occurs? It's a question one can't help but wonder about a lengthy incident that took place for what was likely months during 2015. Magazine WIRED released a damning report detailing telling information its journalists discovered on six pages of Amazon's internal documents. Apparently, staff had been actively going through high-profile individuals' search and order histories to snoop. Countless big names, from rapper Kanye West to multiple stars of the Marvel Avengers movie franchise, were violated. Several ex-workers later stepped forward to confirm they'd indeed seen it happen, and that 'everybody did it'. July 2016: Claim of Breach In July 2016, a Twitter user by the name #0x2Taylor took to that social media platform claiming they had successfully breached Amazon's main servers and would expose the sensitive account data of more than 80,000 Kindle customers if the company did not pay up. Although the requested amount - only $700 - would be nothing to Amazon, it ultimately decided not to react. The anonymous hacker followed through by posting the 'stolen' information, however, it turned out the data was unlikely to be legitimate. 2017: Ring Camera Spying Although it might not fall in the category of more common instances of cybercrime, we'd be remiss to not mention an incident that shocked the world - and particularly Ring video customers - in 2017. An employee at the Amazon subsidiary had been found to have spied on customers using their own devices. This went on for months until the abuse of power was eventually discovered and the staff member was terminated. 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July 2021: GDPR Fine In July of 2021, European regulators slammed Amazon with a record $886.6 million penalty for violating the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) data processing rules. The Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection (CNDP) claimed the multinational corporation had mishandled EU citizens' personal information and failed to properly secure their data. While that doesn't technically constitute a breach, lawmakers' argued it could have easily become one. The takeaway from all of this? Online data is almost never 100 percent secure. If the biggest and wealthiest company in the world can fail to protect its servers several times over, everyday enterprises don't stand a chance. Not alone, at least. iDox.ai's data security solutions equip small, medium, and large organizations alike to stop liabilities in their tracks. Easily search your sensitive unstructured data, redact, and eliminate any potential data leakage points with our state-of-the-art solutions. Contact us today to learn more.

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Latest Data Breaches To Learn From

By Alisa Fetic Cybersecurity attacks remain a top threat for businesses as more and more companies devise proactive measures to secure their data. More than 4,000 publicly disclosed data breaches occurred in 2022, exposing over 22 billion records to bad actors. IBM reported that the average cost of data breaches increased from $4.24 million in 2021 to $4.35 million in 2022—representing a 2.6% increase. While the financial loss resulting from data breaches is significantly high, the real impact on businesses runs much deeper; reputational damages, legal liabilities, and loss of customer trust. Unfortunately, cybersecurity threats aren’t going away. In fact, they get more sophisticated by the day. These threats affect businesses of all sizes—big and small, so it’s vital for organizations to take appropriate measures to thwart the attacks. This article discusses the most notable data breaches that occurred in December 2022. 1. Uber Uber, the global mobility company, suffered a series of attacks in 2022. In September, the company suffered a data breach from an alleged “teenager” threat actor. The hacker compromised the company’s ride-sharing system, gaining access to confidential user data. Uber reported that the attacker downloaded some internal slack messages and accessed data from an internal tool the company uses to manage invoices. Its latest attack happened in December 2022. On December 10 th , a new trove of Uber data was posted on BreachForums. The leaked data included personally identifiable information (PII) of 77,000 Uber employees, source code, and the company’s internal reports. Uber announced on December 12 th that a hacker going by the name “UberLeaks” gained access to their employees’ data and was posting it on social forums. The company believes the attackers accessed its data in a recent breach on TeqTivity—a vendor Uber uses for tracking services. 3. Rackspace On December 2 nd , Texas-based cloud computing giant Rackspace was hit by a ransomware attack, leaving thousands of customers worldwide without access to their data. A few days later, the firm revealed that it was dealing with a security incident that forced it to shut down its Microsoft Exchange Server. Shortly after, Rackspace confirmed that the incident was indeed a ransomware attack. The company also warned its customers not to hand over their sensitive information to anyone who may contact them requesting such information over email or phone. Rackspace didn’t disclose which ransomware group was behind the attack and whether customer data was compromised. The company has received widespread criticism for concealing critical information about the incident. So far, at least two lawsuits have been filed against the company. 2. Last Pass On December 22 nd , the beleaguered password manager giant Last Pass confirmed in a blog post that a hacker had infiltrated their system in an August data breach attempt. Customers’ data may have been at risk of being exposed in a data breach that targeted a database of encrypted password vaults. The hacker used data they stole in the August breach to compromise another employee and obtain credentials that allowed them access to the password database. But just because the attacker gained access to the encrypted vaults doesn’t mean they accessed the passwords. While they have the vaults, it would still be difficult for them to access the passwords, though not impossible. It’s just the first step to cracking the passwords. Wrapping Up 2022 has been a busy year for security professionals as data breaches have affected millions of users and cost companies billions in damages. As attackers advance their strategies, organizations should tighten their security policies to thwart cyberattacks and minimize damage.

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Jan 18, 2023

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By Alisa Fetic Public record requests are a common practice in the United States. Journalists, politicians, and concerned citizens alike use them as a tool to obtain information they're legally entitled to access under official laws. But despite their importance, public record requests aren't always handled the way they should be. There are countless high-profile examples of large organizations and groups failing to properly produce records, for reasons ranging from logistical issues to outright dereliction of responsibility. In this article, we'll go over two of these cases and explain what make them such important learning opportunities to those who fall under the provisions of laws like the PRA. UW Public Records Office The University of Washington's football team decided to partner with rapid antigen company Quidel to handle player testing protocols at the onset of COVID-19. It, like many other schools in the country, was doing everything it could to salvage the 2020 season, and hoped that offering these ultra-rapid - but notably less accurate - tests would be enough to keep the team safe. The Seattle Times and other local media outlets quickly jumped on this story, filing a public records request to the UW for copies of emails about the Quidel deal. The school responded by saying it could not find any relevant records, not once, but twice, after being asked to search again. Further investigation by the Seattle Times with Oregon State University revealed that there were indeed emails regarding the matter - many of which painted an ugly picture of the school's decision-making process. The UW was forced to admit it had failed to properly search for the emails, and local media outlets sued them for violating the Public Record Act. It blamed the fact that the school was incredibly short on resources and only had eight employees to respond to requests for information. This incident isn't just noteworthy for the $97,000 settlement it cost the University of Washington. It also resulted in an intangible loss, that being the damage the school's reputation suffered after all was set and done. West v City of Tacoma (1/28/2020) In 2013, the city public record request was made by resident Arthur West seeking records related to the acquisition, which the city promptly responded to. But the documents provided by West soon after appealed the city's decision, claiming that their search for documents was inadequate and hence, withholding information on the matter was illegal. After deliberation, the court reasoned that while the city was correct to withhold certain documents pertaining to 'Stingray', they had also failed to turn over emails about the technology, including responses to a reporter's questions. This was deemed responsive to West's request and therefore constituted withholding of public records - something strictly prohibited by the PRA. These two cases demonstrate just how easy it is to run afoul of public records law, even when specifically trying to abide by it. In both cases, the courts found that despite good intentions, there had been a violation of the law, and this was something that could have been easily avoided. This is why it's so important for those tasked with responding to public record requests to take their jobs seriously and make sure they are providing all of the relevant documents that have been requested - it's not just the law, but a matter of public trust.

Dec 21, 2022

Latest Data Breach: The European Commission and AstraZeneca

By Alisa Fetic Most citizens, consumers, and businesses are familiar with redactions - the black boxes, gray boxes, and other shapes that mask out sensitive information in documents. Redacting is a common practice in the world of legal matters, where organizations need to share information with each other while still preserving its confidentiality. But despite its importance, redacting isn't always conducted with the utmost attention to detail. There are several high-profile examples of redactions gone wrong, where confidential information was inadvertently disclosed due to human error or a lack of appropriate security measures. In this article, we'll detail one of the most recent - involving The European Commission and AstraZeneca. The onset of COVID-19 created a unique demand for all sorts of products. In March 2020, it was largely toilet paper, non-perishable food items, and masks. About a year later, however, with the finalization of clinical trials, a new item entered the spotlight: vaccines. As the world raced to inoculate as many people as possible before new variants of the virus spread, governments and organizations scrambled to secure vaccine doses. The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU), was one such entity. To ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines throughout its member states, it entered into negotiations with AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, for the supply of 400 million doses. The agreement was signed in August 2020, but it wasn't until January 2021 that the Commission published a redacted version of the contract. This was done in an effort to put pressure on the drug maker after months of delayed deliveries and what the bloc considered a 'failure to commitment'. Unfortunately, this apparent effort to hold AstraZeneca accountable backfired spectacularly. The redactions in the public document weren't as thorough as they should have been, and a significant amount of confidential information was inadvertently revealed. This includes the total value of the contract - €870m - as well as a breakdown of the "costs of goods". This information should have been obscured, as it could potentially be exploited by other pharmaceutical companies in their own negotiations with the Commission. The actual reason for the redaction error is speculated to be a technical glitch, where whatever software was used to obscure the text failed to do its job properly. Some important information, including the number of doses and delivery deadlines of the contract, remained hidden. The European Commission has since publicly acknowledged the breach, and released updated documents with the correct redactions. In the end, those that suffered the most were EU citizens, who were left waiting weeks or months longer for their vaccines. This incident between the European Commission and AstraZeneca is yet another reminder of how important it is to pay attention to redactions. Organizations should always ensure that their security measures are up-to-date and appropriate - especially when sensitive documents are concerned - and that redactions are performed properly. Doing so can help to prevent confidential information from being disclosed accidentally – something the European Commission has learned the hard way. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Dec 21, 2022

CommonSpirit Health Ransomware Attack

By Greg Sallis The recent ransomware attack against CommonSpirit Health has caused a stir in the healthcare industry. The attack resulted in a massive data breach, exposing the personal information of thousands of patients and employees. This incident underscores the importance of cybersecurity in the healthcare sector and how they must prepare organizations to protect sensitive data from malicious actors. In this blog post, we will discuss the details of the CommonSpirit Health ransomware attack, how they could have prevented it, and the importance of data redaction in mitigating the risks of a similar attack. What Happened? CommonSpirit Health operates more than 700 care sites and 142 hospitals in 21 states, providing high-quality healthcare for millions of patients. On October 5, the organization confirmed an “IT security issue” as a ransomware attack. Threat actors gained access to portions of the network between September 16 and October 3, potentially compromising patient and family members’ data. The U.S. Department of Health data breach portal confirms that threat actors gained access to the personal data of 623,774 patients. The attackers may have accessed files containing names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and unique ID numbers used internally by the organization. Fortunately, they did not get their hands on medical record numbers or insurance IDs. CommonSpirit quickly reacted to the attack and mobilized to protect its systems, contain the incident, begin an investigation, and maintain continuity of care. The organization also notified law enforcement and is supporting its ongoing investigation. How To Prevent This Attack? What could have CommonSpirit done to avoid this attack? Let’s explore some possibilities. Update All Systems One of the most effective preventative measures was to ensure that all systems are up-to-date with the latest security patches and software. They should do this regularly to ensure the patching of any vulnerabilities. Train Employees On Security Protocols In addition, it is important to train employees on proper security protocols, including avoiding suspicious emails, using strong passwords, and not using public Wi-Fi networks. These steps could have helped reduce the chances of a successful attack. Implement Redaction Finally, organizations should consider redaction to reduce the risk of an attack. Redaction involves masking or removing sensitive data from documents before them sharing publicly. Let’s look more into it. What is Redaction and Why is It Important? Redaction is the latest, most effective method to secure data and prevent ransomware attacks. Here are two reasons why it is making massive waves in the data security industry: Reduces Risk of Exposure Redaction helps reduce the risk of exposing information to exploitation by those looking to harm. With the increasing prevalence of digital media, organizations need to use redaction to safeguard sensitive material. Removes Identifying Information Redaction can help prevent cyberattacks by removing identifying information from documents and emails before sending them. This process ensures hackers won’t be able to access confidential information if they intercept the material. Redaction: The Future of Ransomware Prevention Organizations should take steps to train employees on the importance of redaction and how to use it. As we have seen, redaction is as close as we can get to a fool-proof ransomware prevention strategy.

Dec 21, 2022