Tag: personal data
Healthcare cyber-attacks now “a national security threat”
Search engine giant's Google Threat Intelligence Group reports that cybercriminal and state-backed cyber-attacks on the healthcare sector in countries such as the US and UK have escalated to a level where they are actually costing lives. “Healthcare's share of posts on data leak sites has doubled over the past three years, even as the number of data leak sites tracked by Google Threat Intelligence Group has increased by nearly 50% year over year. The impact of these attacks means that they must be taken seriously as a national security threat, no matter the motivation of the actors behind it,” says Google.
The data currency time bomb
Corporations are not only amassing huge amounts of personal data on their customers as never before but also trading that data, frequently without the customer’s knowledge. As yet, the general public is largely unaware of the uses to which their personal information is being put or whose hands it ends up in. At the same time, companies holding the data must tread an increasingly complex regulatory minefield. According to Chris Diebler, Security VP at cybersecurity company DataGrail: “Companies are all terrified of not having enough data as data is the new currency. However, companies need to think seriously about reducing these vast mountains of data. The value of data must be balanced against the cost and security risk of maintaining it." Companies that fail to secure personal data effectively or trade customer data with third parties face considerable potential brand damage when the details are obtained by bad actors and they suffer identity theft or financial fraud as a consequence.
How can companies deal with data overload?
Sanjaya Kumar, MD, is the CEO of cybersecurity company SureShield, Inc. Dr. Kumar has more than 25 years of healthcare compliance, risk management, and security experience. In an exclusive interview with Cyber Intelligence, he outlines the challenge presented by the current environment of data overload and some of the steps organizations should take to mitigate the associated risks from it.
The root of the problem for dentists
In an exclusive interview with Cyber Intelligence, Tom Terrenez, the chief executive of Medix Dental IT, describes the cyber-threats currently overwhelming many US dental practices. His warnings concerning data can be equally applied to doctors’ surgeries, upmarket beauticians and hairdressers, and other small businesses that provide personal services.
Marriott to pay $52m fine for 300m customer data breaches
Marriott International has agreed to pay a $52 million fine for cyber-negligence resulting in data breaches affecting over 300 million of its customers worldwide, representing a fine of less than two cents per customer. The US Federal Trade Commission and attorney generals from 49 states ran parallel investigations into three data breaches which took place between 2014 and 2020. Cybercriminals were able to steal the passport information, payment card numbers, loyalty numbers, dates of birth, email addresses plus personal information from hundreds of millions of customers.
90 percent of US users mistrust social media
Nine out of 10 US citizens do not trust social media. In some other developed markets, trust in services such as Facebook is even lower. In the UK, only three percent of consumers trust social media services with their personal data, and in Japan, it is only two percent, about one in fifty. Thales 2024 Digital Trust Index, which surveyed 12,426 people worldwide, reports that, while the majority of users mistrust social media and online retail and entertainment services, trust in some other services is far higher. Consumers have much more trust in banking, healthcare, and government services when it comes to sharing their personal data – a universal trend witnessed in all the markets surveyed. Banking services are the most highly trusted with 44 percent of users placing their trust in them. This was closely followed by healthcare with 41 percent and government services with 37 percent.