How Does Cyber Crime Happen?
September 2017 was not a good month for Equifax Inc. They were the latest victim of a global cyber attack. Equifax Inc. is a consumer credit and reporting agency. They collect and store personal information of more than 800 million individual sand about 80 million businesses worldwide.
It is reported that 145.5 million Americans had their data including birthdates and social security numbers compromised. Other individuals from the UK, Canada and other countries data were compromised at the same time.
You would think Equifax Inc., a leader in collecting personal information would have the proper safe guards in place to protect the valuable data they collect! A global company at that magnitude should have every resource available to them to prevent cyber crime. However cyber crime can happen to big and small companies.
How can a company with revenue of $3.1 billion and 9500 employees be hacked? There are several ways cyber crime happens:
1) Phishing – An individual disguises oneself as a reputable company (eg. bank) or person through email and requests that you share your personal information directly with them. Personal information can be obtained such as credit cards details, user names and passwords by Phishing.
2) Social Engineering – An individual impersonates an executive of a company in an email in order to obtain money transfer from an unsuspecting junior employee. The email is directed to a junior employee, who may be more susceptible due to a lack of training or fear of not following the email direction.
3) Ransomware – A companies computer system is infiltrated by a malicious program that encrypts the system files and demands a ransom to unlock the encrypted files. Recent ransomware attacks are WannaCry and Petya viruses. It is estimated that the WannaCry ransomware expenses totaled $4 billion.
Equifax inc. was criminally hacked because they failed to patch vulnerability in their computer software framework, Apache Struts 2. Criminals had access to their files from May 2017 until July 30, 2017. It took their security team approximately 2 months to notice that their system was compromised.
What can you do to protect against Cyber Crime?
A simple rule of thumb is when you deal with data you have an exposure. Business’s can purchase a Cyber Liability policy to help cover the expenses that come as a result of a Cyber Attack. Call us now at 1-877-941-2266 to get a quote today to protect your stored data. You will be surprised at the cost.
