Another day, another half billion people have their private data exposed…

The news of this latest breach was released on Friday (11/30/18):

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marriott-breach-how-to-protect-yourself-if-youve-been-affected-by-the-starwood-data-breach/

It’s become so common to hear about these data breaches, that we wouldn’t blame you if you were to ignore these headlines.

 

This one was particularly bad – including not just the regular information like email and passwords – but possibly even including information such as credit cards, birthdays, passport numbers and addresses.  So, from a personal perspective, you should be wary if you’ve been a customer of theirs in the past.

 

For those of you concerned about this particular hack, the article above has some very good suggestions on what to do.   Some more helpful information is included in this series of Tweets from Mike Litt, the President of U.S. PIRG (U.S. PIRG, the United States Public Interest Research Group).  https://twitter.com/MikeLittUSA/status/1068530543149572096.

 

From a business perspective – UCRIGHT continues to advise our clients that no matter how big or small they are; that they too are at risk.  Further, we try to explain that security, in general, and more specifically threat mitigation, is one of the most critical components of IT environments.

 

All too often new clients tell us, “Well, I have an advanced firewall, email filtering and Anti-Virus software….why do I need anything else”.

 

We understand the sentiment and we obviously believe the above technologies are a must have for any computer or network connected to the internet.

 

However what we explain when we hear this, is that in this day and age this is just the bare minimum and should not be considered a complete security solution.

 

Instead, customers need a robust and well rounded security strategy.  UCRIGHT has partnered with industry leading security providers to help minimize your exposure – some of the most common offerings are listed below:

 

  • Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
  • 24 x 7 proactive threat monitoring and mitigation services
  • Anti-phishing protection
  • Proper backup and offnet retention (yes, even for your cloud based data!)
  • Penetration testing
  • End user education and validation

 

Another interesting fact is that according to a study commissioned by IBM, the average cost of a data breach to a company is $3.86 million dollars.  https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach.  With the introduction of GDPR in the EU, and similar legislation being proposed in the US, you can assume this number will continue to climb.  And while it may be financially tolerable for a company like Marriot/Starwood to pay these high penalties, many other companies would likely have to close their doors after suffering a similar breach.

 

As with all our offerings, UCRIGHT knows there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution and that’s why we are here to help guide you through the process from beginning to end.

 

We know security keeps you up at night, or at least it should, but with the right planning and solutions it doesn’t have too!

 

Contact us today, for a better sleep tomorrow!

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