Cyber Scandals in Big Tech [Infographic]

2014 was a year of high profile cloud breaches that were examples of aggressive data driven strategic cyber crime. Criminals are stepping up their game and data breaches are becoming both common and devastating.

Dave Cummins, the Managing Director of Speechpath, created a very insightful infographic on the topic of “Hacking the Un-Hackable, Cyber Scandals in Big Tech” which I think should be of interest to all of us. It’s important to learn about the cyber scandals included in the infographic because these are great proofs that businesses need to take a better look at their security strategy. Here are 3 of the high profile cloud breaches:

• eBay

When: February and March 2014

Size: 145 million customers affected

Exposure: accessed names, emails, encrypted passwords, postal addresses, phone numbers and DOBs

Company response:

• The stolen passwords were encrypted
• Notified customers to change their passwords
• The breach did not impact PayPal or any of the financial information held there
• Theft of employee credential allowed the hackers access to the corporate network

• Apple iCloud

When: September 2014

Size: Lead to news headlines worldwide due to high profile users

Exposure: Broke into the cloud accounts of a targeted number of Hollywood celebrities and stole nude photos. Apple was not penetrated but was using a lock on their customer’s accounts that was commercially incompetent

Company response:

• The breach was not system-wide but specifically targeted at celebrity accounts
• None of the breaches were in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone

• Adobe

When: October 2013

Size: 36 million customers

Exposure:

• Accessed customer IDs and encrypted passwords
• Removed sensitive information including names, credit and debit card details and expiration dates
• Got access to a part of the Adobe Photoshop source code

Company response:

• Sent email notifications to its users
• Reset the passwords for all Adobe IDs with valid encrypted passwords regardless of customer activity status

We’ve seen high-end data breaches of large companies, with data, personal records and financial information stolen and sold on the black market in a matter of days. Information security risk represents one of the biggest challenges to today’s IT manager, with malware threats set to continue growing exponentially. Is your business properly secured?