Over the past few years, attacks and breaches into the networks of organizations have been highly publicized. Attacks are becoming more common and customer data is being stolen at alarming rates. Recently, a number of high profile retailers had breaches that resulted in the loss of millions of customers’ personal information including credit card details. In this age of digital commerce, the theft of a person’s personal information can be extremely impacting to the person.
The recent breaches into retailers systems are coming from multiple fronts. In some cases, it is the result of lax security rules and in others it may be from an external source, such as a vendor, being used as a conduit in the retailer’s system. Because of the various possibilities for attacks, retailers must have a detailed risk assessment plan in place to identify all possibilities of threats. These risk management plans will need to be constantly monitored and adapted. Complacency in regards to risk management leaves organizations vulnerable to newer and more advanced threats.
Attacks and Breaches
There have been a number of security breaches into retailer’s systems that have resulted in the loss of customer data, but the most widely publicized instance in the past year was the Target stores data breach. This attack occurred at the beginning of the holiday shopping season in November of 2013. In total, up to 110 million customers may have had their credit and debit card information stolen between November 27 and December 15th (Krebs, 2013). The size of this theft is staggering and the methods used in the theft reveal a gap that may be waiting to be exploited with other organizations.
The Target data breach was not a direct attack into the systems o...
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...mer data and are adapting accordingly. Retailers and holders of consumer information will need to adapt as well if they wish to retain their customers.
Works Cited
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Krebs, B. (2013). Sources: target investigating data breach. Retrieved from krebsonsecurity.com/2013/12/sources-target-investigating-data-breach
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The Minneapolis based Target Corporation announced in December that criminals forced their way into the company’s computer system. The data breach compromised 40 million credit and debit card accounts of customers who shopped during the holiday season between November 27 and December 15, 2013. The data captured was far broader than originally imagined as hackers gained access to 70 million customer’s personal information including names, home addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses. Additionally, expiration dates, debit-card PIN numbers, and the embedded code on the magnetic strip of the card were stolen.
Hacking into large companies or agencies to steal one’s card information has become simple. Lewis (2013) says that, “Hacking is incredibly easy; survey data consistently shows that 80 to 90 percent of successful breaches of corporate networks required only the most basic techniques“(p. 1). On November 27, 2013, Target’s security was breeched when forty million credit and debit cards were stolen. The breach lasted from November 27 to December 15, 2013.
Issa utilizes statistics to suggest ideas. He says, “The Office of Personnel Management’s security breach resulted in the theft of 22 million Americans’ information, including fingerprints, Social Security numbers, addresses, employment history, and financial records” (Issa). Issa also adds that, “The Internal Revenue Service’s hack left as many as 334,000 taxpayers accounts compromised‑though just this week, the IRS revised that number to o...
The year 2013 was not one marked for pride for the retail chain, Target. They had one of the largest data breaches known to date that occurred between November 27th and December 15th. Not only was this the one of the largest attacks known to date of this kind, it was also quite eye opening to many who may not have paid any attention to the world of information security. The Target hack resulted in 40 million compromised credit and debit card accounts and that was just the initial known result. After some time, the research revealed that a total of as many as 110 million Target customers were the victims of this gigantic hack. Although computer crimes occur within the United States often, the bigger problem is that criminals from other countries across the oceans are attacking as well.
Identity theft has been a major issue of privacy and fraud. In the data breach analysis from the Identity Theft Resource Center (2013), the number of data breaches from the year 2005 to 2012 increased. In 2012, there had been 49% where the data breach exposed people Social Security Number. The data breach of 2012 has a rate of 27.4% caused by hackers. These breaches were commonly from 36.4% businesses and 34.7% health and medical (Identity Theft Resource Center 2013). The number of identity theft varies from physical possession to digital possession. At least one-fifth of trash cans contains papers listing people’s credit card number and personal information. People that throw away their trash mails contain much personal information that is useful to steal someone's identity (Davis, 2002). Technology becomes a need where people use it daily and as a result it has also become a use for identity theft as well. Throughout the years as technology develops so does identity theft. This paper shows the types, methods and technique used for identity theft, and it also examines possible risk of identity theft from current technology.
About 15 million United States residents have their identities and information used fraudulently each year. Along the use of their identities, they also had a combined financial loss totaling up to almost $50 billion. Major companies such as Apple, Verizon, Target, Sony, and many more have been victims of consumer information hacking. In each of the cases, millions of consumers’ personal information has been breached. In the article “Home Depot 's 56 Million Card Breach Bigger Than Target 's” on September 18, 2014, 56 million cards were breached due to cyber attackers. Before the Home Depot attack, Target had 40 million cards breached. Company’s information is constantly being breached and the consumers’ are the ones who end up having to pay the price. If a company cannot protect the information it takes, then it should not collect the information.
If you have ever used the internet than you probably know that almost every website today asks for some type of your personal information. Today, identity theft is becoming more and more common. Websites used to promise more security for consumers, and today websites are no longer offering the same protection. With more and more people shopping online, criminals are gaining access to innocent shoppers’ identities easier than ever. Companies are using consumer information to help target the individual for sales of things they like. Many people are worried that these companies have gone too far and that the information is an invasion of privacy.
The threats to security from the United States Department of Defense, the national power grid and the Chamber of Commerce are very real and omnipresent. The Defense Department made an admission of the first major cyber attack upon its systems in August 2010. It was revealed that the attack actually took place in 2008 and was accomplished by placing a malicious code into the flash drive of a U.S. military laptop. “The code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital breachhead.” (2) This quote, attributed to then Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, is just part of the shocking revelations that were disclosed in his speech made on July 14, 2011.
Security helps the organization meet its business objectives or mission by protecting its physical and financial resources, reputation, legal position, employees, and other tangible and intangible assets through the selection and application of appropriate safeguards. Businesses should establish roles and responsibilities of all personnel and staff members. However, a Chief Information Officer should be appointed to direct an organization’s day to day management of information assets. Supporting roles are performed by the service providers and include systems operations, whose personnel design and operate the computer systems. Each team member must be held accountable in ensuring all of the rules and policies are being followed, as well as, understanding their roles, responsibilities and functions. Organizations information processing systems are vulnerable to many threats that can inflict various types of damage that can result in significant losses (Harris, 2014). Losses can come from actions from trusted employees that defraud the system, outside hackers, or from careless data entry. The major threat to information protection is error and omissions that data entry personnel, users, system operators and programmers make. To better protect business information resources, organizations should conduct a risk analysis to see what
As electronic commerce, online business-to-business operations, and global connectivity have become vital components of a successful business strategy, enterprises have adopted security processes and practices to protect information assets. But if you look at today's computing environments, system security is a horrible game of numbers: there are currently over 9,223 publicly released vulnerabilities covering known security holes in a massive range of applications from popular Operating Systems through to obscure and relatively unknown web applications. [01] Over 300 new vulnerabilities are being discovered and released each month. Most companies work diligently to maintain an efficient, effective security policy, implementing the latest products and services to prevent fraud, vandalism, sabotage, and denial of service attacks. But the fact is you have to patch every hole of your system, but an attacker need find only one to get into your environment. Whilst many organisations subscribe to major vendor's security alerts, these are just the tip of the security iceberg and even these are often ignored. For example, the patch for the Code Red worm was available some weeks before the worm was released. [02]
The ability to conduct warfare through technological methods has increased information security awareness and the need to protect an entities infrastructure. Subsequently, cyber warfare produces increased risk to security practitioners that employ technology and other methods to mitigate risks to information and the various systems that hold or transmit data. A significant risk to information lies in the conduct of electronic commerce, hereinafter called e-commerce. E-commerce is the purchasing or selling of goods and/or services through the internet or other electronic means (Liu, Chen, Huang, & Yang, 2013). In this article, the researcher will discuss cyber warfare risks, present an evaluation on established security measures, identify potential victims of identity theft, and present an examina...
Kharpal, A 2013, Cyber-crime is ‘greatest threat’ to companies survival: EY, CNBC, accessed 12 November 2013, http://www.cnbc.com/id/101155856
Every day millions in some cases billions of dollars are made by businesses from income brought in by online sale of products and services. As businesses continually develop and expand their client base with online products and services so does the desire by criminals to exploit vulnerabilities in their e-commerce setup. The mass worldwide internet usage growth within the last 20 years has been “an approximate 16 million users in 1995 to an estimated 2,937 million in March of 2014” As the importance of e-commerce increases so does the need to protect the technological infrastructure that will carry out online transactions for each business regardless of its size. I will attempt to highlight and review the history of a few cyber crimes to show the progression of the crimes within the last 30-40 years. I also plan to review how the economy and consumers are impacted by cyber crimes. Finally I will make an effort to contribute with information gathering on how to lower the risk of a cyber attack from and individual user to a large scale business.
Every day, citizens are constantly losing money and being victimized due to these fraudulent activities. Cyber crime, including fraud, identity theft, stalking, and hacking, is a growing problem that can be prevented by taking the proper precautions. The biggest cases of cyber crimes are cases of fraud. Online fraud comes in many forms. It ranges from viruses that attack computers with the goal of retrieving personal information, to email schemes that lure victims into wiring money to fraudulent sources” (What is “online fraud”).
For years, cyber criminals have been using bank statements, discarded credit cards, tax invoices and other bills (normally found in trash) to gain access to personal information and assume false iden...