The holidays are a time to celebrate and rejoice with family and friends. However, during the most recent holiday shopping season, many found themselves worrying whether or not the gift they purchased for a loved one put them in jeopardy due to cyber-attacks.
Hackers reportedly stole 42 million customer records, including email addresses and clear-text passwords, from Cupid Media’s network of dating websites. A file containing the Cupid Media user data was found on the same server where hackers also stored millions of records stolen from Adobe, PR Newswire, the U.S. National White Collar Crime Center and other organizations.
Visitors to the upcoming Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, will be able to access the Internet faster and in more places than any previous Olympics, all for free to guests. However Russia’s FSB security service is reportedly installing a sweeping and invasive surveillance service to ensure that they will be able to intercept, read and even filter every digital communication passing through the city’s telephone and Internet networks during the game, leading to many security experts suggesting that visitors leave their devices at home.
Imagine for a moment that you have a briefcase containing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash belonging to your organization. How would you treat this briefcase? Would you leave it unattended in an unlocked area for significant periods of time? Maybe on the front seat of your vehicle while you went shopping, or perhaps on the table at the cafeteria while you go for a drink refill? Sounds absurd, right? Unfortunately, this is exactly what people continue to do every day with their organization’s critical data and information, whether it’s stored on mobile electronic devices or other portable media.