Another report of a data breach greeted us in the news this week. It is becoming more common and, I fear, desensitizing us to the potential risk that this trend is highlighting. Digital Insurance brought this news to us in their article, “What we should learn from the Capital One data breach.”
In most cases like these, the public is not privy to the details of the incident. However, this recent Capital One breach is unique, as much of the information (including the how and who) is available in the court documents. This enables us to understand what happened and learn from the situation to improve our own security operations.
An important note about this recent breach at Capital One: more than 100 million people are impacted, but less than 1 percent of those people had their social security or bank account numbers compromised. Other data was stolen, such as reported income, addresses, names and other key information.
Mistakes are inevitable, especially when humans are involved. Conducting internal and recurring reviews of security safeguards is an effective method to detect potential exposures before they are exploited.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
