Hundreds of Data Breaches Per Day and Why That Matters to YOU.
The cost of a data breach makes its way back to your wallet and bank account eventually
I was very surprised when I was just talking to someone to hear them say, yeah I’ve heard of a couple of breaches. In the cybersecurity industry we live in a bubble and see the news about breaches all around us. Other people do not. So for anyone out there who doesn’t understand this there are hundreds of data breaches happening every single day — possibly thousands — and those are just the breaches we know about.
Need proof? Search for data breach in Google and click on news. Head over to the state government pages where businesses are required to report data breaches. Take a look at the Verizon Data Breach Report and the IBM Data Breach Report. Those reports only include what businesses are required to report and reports from businesses who are following those laws.
And you shrug. Yeah. So?
Why that matters to you is that when you are on your way to the hospital you want to be able to get in for your appointment. When a hospital in my town, Savannah, was breached they couldn’t accept some patients. Here’s a recent example:
You also don’t like your gas prices rising right? Well it went up after the attack on the Colonial Pipeline in my state, Georgia. It never completely went back down. It’s not just politics or the economy.
In fact, the price of everything is going up due to data breaches. Why? Because every time there is a data breach companies have to spend millions of dollars to deal with it. IBM publishes a report on the cost of a data breach every year. I wrote about it in my book at the bottom of this post. This year the average cost of a data breach was 4.45 million dollars.
Who pays for that? Everyone.
In addition to the cost of a data breach after the fact, companies are all investing more to prevent major losses later. It’s all about risk. Companies will spend less than their perceived risk of paying more after the breach but as the cost goes up they have to spend more to prevent losses — and that ends up costing you more, but less than if they have a data breach.
What kind of expenses do companies have after a breach?
Well, you have to report the breach properly in every state and country where you do business or your customers exist depending on the cyber laws in that jurisdiction. I was just spot checking a few states out of curiosity.
In Washington state organizations have 45 days to report a breach involving personal data. In other states they may have to report sooner or later. When organizations have a security incident they need to resolve the security problem and fix it so the attackers cannot get back in, determine the scope of the breach and what data it affected, and report the breach within the timeframe required by law.
There may be industry specific laws such as this law in Pennsylvania that pertains to the insurance industry and involves fines.
Here are some of the fines and penalties companies have had to pay and no, I never saw my $125 for the Yahoo breach. Those penalties do not come back to consumers in a payout. They come back to you in higher fees for services. Here are some examples of fines companies have had to pay:
Not only do companies have to pay fines and fees to governments, they have to pay lawyers and public relations people to deal with the breach and for very large breaches — often a company that specializes in incident response (the things you have to do after a breach).
In addition to states you have to understand which federal government agencies that apply to your business have breach reporting laws. The SEC just changed their reporting requirements last July. Publicly traded companies must report a data breach in four days.
Your retirement portfolio may take a hit
If you’re invested in the stock market and you are invested in a company that had a data breach the stock price may fall. For example, consider the SolarWinds breach:
SolarWinds made an incomplete disclosure about the SUNBURST attack in a December 14, 2020, Form 8-K filing, following which its stock price dropped approximately 25 percent over the next two days and approximately 35 percent by the end of the month.
The SEC is going after this now and charging not just companies but individuals with fines and legal action.
I’m looking into this case now and plan to write about it more later.
How your home router affects national security
You may think that cybersecurity doesn’t matter to you. No one wants to steal what you have. But you would be wrong. Your home router can be compromised with malware and used to either spy on you, steal your passwords and money in your bank account, take down the Internet, change the content on pages that you request from websites to try to influence you, or use your home router in attacks on other systems. I wrote about this before here:
It’s happening again. The FBI just took down a Chinese botnet that was infecting home network equipment. You can read about that here and from many other sources:
The real reason why this matters will lead you to look at what is going on in Ukraine and how networks and cybersecurity affect the outcome of that conflict. If your country is in a war and the other side knows what you are going to do before you do it, good luck, right? In some cases, other countries (including the US) use propaganda campaigns to try to convince people to work against their own government. These books and my own have a lot more on that topic.
And by the way, we are in a war. It’s a cyberwar. It’s happening right now whether you realize it or not. The government cannot secure every person’s devices and networks. People and companies need to take steps to secure their data.
How breaches facilitate scams and stolen identities and money
Recently, I started getting these odd scammer letters in the mail after a notification of a healthcare breach. So did someone get that data who is now selling it online? Is that the source of this noise in part?
How do these scammers know specifically how to target you? Because some company had a data breach and your personal information made its way to the “dark web” which is the place where criminals sell stolen data and other nefarious things. Now the attackers are using that information to contact you with scams that look real because they know something about you.
So although the breach may not directly seem like it impacts you, even if your data was in it, it may affect you somewhere down the line. Someone sells your data to someone else who uses it to try to trick you into giving up money.
I know one person who says he’s been hit by scammers getting access to his account four times in the last year. He happens to be a target they would definitely be after. They likely got his data from one of the many data breaches that have occurred over the past few years.
How to protect yourself and your business
I wrote this post on cybersecurity for my Mom with some basic things non-technical people can do to improve their own cybersecurity.
If you are more on the technical side I have many topics on this blog explaining how to learn and get started in cybersecurity up to more advanced topics.
If you own a company or are part of an organization, think about how you can improve the security of that organization. I just launched a service to help small businesses with really basic web, network, and cloud scans in addition to more extensive penetration testing services. My goal is to help more small businesses secure their systems and data since most cybersecurity experts are going after 500K salaries and small businesses can’t afford that. We’ll see how it works out.
Be informed of scams that can affect you personally
For people who like to criticize or try to destroy our intelligence community (CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security), I’m guessing those people do not really understand what these organizations do beyond what they see in movies. You can find out what type of crimes the FBI is stopping and the scams they are warning you about to try to protect you here:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases
I didn’t even know before I wrote this that jury duty scammers are trying to scam residents in Georgia in relation to jury duty. I happen to be on call for Jury Duty right now. Hmm. Good to know.
https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/atlanta/news/jury-duty-scammers-target-georgians
Be aware of the different types of scams that may affect you personally so you don’t lose your money. If you do fall prey to a scammer, report at the Internet Crime Complaint Center:
Be skeptical of things you receive in the mail that don’t look right. I just got one “for customers of American Express, Citibank, etc. etc. etc.” warning me I would be in trouble if I didn’t respond in 10 days. If I had a bill that was overdue, I would get a letter from the company where I owe the money, not a generic letter covering a bunch of different financial companies. Seems odd. I looked the number up online and it was connected to scams.
We got a lot of marketing materials after getting a loan that made it sound like it was coming from our bank. These flyers and mailers are pretty deceptive. I actually checked with the local bank manager twice and she said they are just other companies trying to sell us things we don’t need. But they look like they are legitimately coming from our bank. That’s the problem and everyone must stay vigilant to try to sort out what is real from what is a scam.
By the way, you’re never too old to help catch a hacker. For everyone saying that our politicians are too old, I think it depends on the person. Here’s a story about a 90 year old former CIA agent who helped catch a scammer.
Be aware and defend yourself to the best of your abilities because cyber security depends on everyone doing their part.
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Teri Radichel | © 2nd Sight Lab 2024
About Teri Radichel:
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⭐️ Author: Cybersecurity Books
⭐️ Presentations: Presentations by Teri Radichel
⭐️ Recognition: SANS Award, AWS Security Hero, IANS Faculty
⭐️ Certifications: SANS ~ GSE 240
⭐️ Education: BA Business, Master of Software Engineering, Master of Infosec
⭐️ Company: Penetration Tests, Assessments, Phone Consulting ~ 2nd Sight LabNeed Help With Cybersecurity, Cloud, or Application Security?
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