Data Breaches
Understanding how to prevent your personal information from being compromised
Many of us have received one at some point or another, the dreaded message informing you about your personal information possibly being compromised during a data breach of a company you have used before. But what exactly is a data breach, how do they happen, how can we prevent them and what do you do if your data is stolen?
What is a data breach and how do they happen?
A data breach occurs when cybercriminals use cyberattacks, such as exploits, SQL injections, spyware or phishing to gain unauthorized access to a company’s/individual’s system or network with the design to steal sensitive information and financial data of the users or customers who do business with that company. So, cybercriminals literally breach the company’s/individual’s cybersecurity defenses to extract sensitive data that they can then either sell or use to make fraudulent purchases or identity theft.
What you should do if your data is stolen:
Reset your password for the compromised account and other accounts that share that password.
Monitor your credit accounts for any suspicious activity
You could consider a credit freeze, which makes it more difficult to open up a new line of credit, but you will have to contact each credit bureau to do this (and to remove the freeze)
Watch your email inbox carefully. Those alert messages you receive when your information has been compromised in a breach could be phishing emails spoofed to resemble a legitimate alert from the affected account. You can read more on how to recognize phishing scams here and about spoofing here.
Considers using a credit monitoring service
Use multi-factor authentication (MFA)
How does BeCloud help to prevent data breaches:
We design data segmentation into our solutions
Enforce the principle of least privilege in the systems we manage
We provide good cybersecurity programs including monitoring and auditing
We get it. You're busy. You don't have time to be hindered by cybersecurity threats!
Join us and make your company a more secure place.