Essay On Data Security Breaches

The healthcare industry in itself is a complex entity. With any form of new technological innovations, people often thinks that, this is the solution for all the present day crisis, but finally end up in more vulnerable situation. So the course of events happened, when it became mandatory to use the electronic health records to compline with HIPPA rules and regulation, without adequate training, many health care organizations across the USA, implemented the same. The author, Snell resurfaces the logos by establishing strong supporting reasons and credible evidence. He points out, the big healthcare data breaches took place, especially at large organizations such as Anthem and Premera. Brett Hansen, Executive Director, Dell, according to Hansen,

This case study, written in 2009 is not the only case where a major data breach has occurred within organizations. In the late 2011 Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) was breached impacting up to 77 million user’s accounts including data on names, address and possibly credit card details. In late 2013 Target had a cyber-attack that compromised a large quantity of its data and had 110 million accounts compromised. Finally in September 2014 Apple had their iCloud server breached by hacking that compromised all the users of the online server. These occurrences still have some unanswered questions and several experts have yet to decipher the actual reason as to why the security breach occurred.

A data breach is an incident in which sensitive, protected or confidential data has potentially been viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Data breaches may involve personal health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets or intellectual property. The most common concept of a data breach is an attacker hacking into a corporate network to steal sensitive data. However, not all data breaches are so dramatic. If an unauthorized hospital employee views a patient's health information on a computer screen over the shoulder of an authorized employee that also constitutes a data breach.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) were established to provide a set of standards, guidelines to assist all federal agencies in executing the FISMA and to assist in managing cost-effective programs to protect organization’s information and information systems. NIST founded on March 03, 1901 and now headquartered Gaithersburg, Maryland. Founded by U.S. Congress, NIST was established to impose general measurement standards laboratory; it is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The fledgling agency quickly assembled standards for electricity, length and mass, temperature, light, and time, and created a system to transfer those

In December 2013, Target was attacked by a cyber-attack due to a data breach. Target is a widely known retailer that has millions of consumers flocking every day to the retailer to partake in the stores wonders. The Target Data Breach is now known as the largest data breach/attack surpassing the TJX data breach in 2007. “The second-biggest attack struck TJX Companies, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshall’s, which said in 2007 that about 45 million credit cards and debit cards had been compromised.” (Timberg, Yang, & Tsukayama, 2013) The data breach occurred to Target was a strong swift kick to the guts to not only the retailer/corporation, but to employees and consumers. The December 2013 data breach, exposed Target in a way that many

Data breaches like these have serious implications for the business operations and could even lead to the collapse of the whole system, where the law is applicable the Company’s systems are put under supervision to make sure they meet the newest regulation for financial data protection and regular auditing to make sure the system is stable and secure.

Every few weeks, we learn about another data breach. It 's the privacy world 's version of an oil spill. A hacker breaks into a company and grabs a database of our personal details. They 're sold on the black market, and the exposure puts us at higher risk of fraud and identity theft. Information protection is something you do, not something you buy. It is not a policy to put in place and forget. Information security requires a strong process and effective technologies, all based on a sound understanding of the business the organization is in and how it performs that business. These days, criminal hacking is a business, everything that is done has a chain linked to real dollars. And hackers are looking for the shortest chain.

This section primarily attempts to provide a better understanding as to how the data breach impacted the results reported in Target’s financial statements. Because the breach occurred within Target’s fourth quarter 2013 period—between November 2, 2013, and February 1, 2014—financial analysis was gathered from information provided in Target’s 2013 quarterly reports, 2012 and 2013 annual report. This analysis will be divided into four parts. The first is an analysis of the company’s quarterly revenues and net earnings and how it measures year-over-year. The second relates to the costs associated with the data breach. The third assesses the company’s profitability through ratio analysis. The final segments gauge Target’s 2013 fiscal year performance with that of its biggest competitor, Walmart.

While all of these technologies have enabled exciting changes and opportunities for businesses, they have also created a unique set of challenges for business managers. Chief among all concerns about technology is the issue of information security. It seems to be almost a weekly occurrence to see a news article about yet another breach of security and loss of sensitive data. Many people will remember high profile data breaches from companies such as T.J Maxx, Boston Market, Sports Authority, and OfficeMax. In the case of T.J. Maxx, a data breach resulted in the loss of more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers. In many of these incidents, the root cause is a lack of adequate security practices within the company. The same technologies that enable managers can also be used against them. Because of this, businesses must take appropriate steps to ensure their data remains secure and their communications remain

People across the world are becoming disproportionately dependent on modern day technology, which results in more vulnerability to cyber-attacks including cybersecurity breaches. Today, the world continues to experience inordinate cases of cybersecurity meltdowns. There is a rapid growth in complexity and volume of cyber-attacks, and this undermines the success of security measures put in place to make the cyberspace secure for users. Cyber-attacks on both private and public information systems are a major issue for information security as well as the legal system. While most states require government organizations and certain federal vendors to report incidences of data breaches, no equivalent legislation exists to cover private entities.

The analysis of 2,260 breaches and more than 100,000 incidents at 67 organizations in 82 countries shows that organizations are still failing to address basic issues and well-known attack methods. The (DBIR, 2016) shows, for example, that nearly two-thirds of confirmed data breaches involved using weak, default or stolen passwords. Also shows that most attacks exploit known vulnerabilities that organizations have never patched, despite patches being available for months – or even years – with the top 10 known vulnerabilities accounting for 85% of successful exploit “Organizations should be investing in training to help employees know what they should and shouldn’t be doing, and

The potential of violations can come from numerous sources (Lawrence & Weber, 2011) (Consumer Information). Recently Equifax had a data breach of their customer’s personal information. The hackers accessed the names, social security numbers, birthdates, and addresses of 142 million American consumers (Consumer Information). This is frightening and happens more often that we think. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers executive, ”Cybercrime has emerged as a formidable threat. Over the years millions have fallen victim to theses attacks. In a survey of 583 U.S. companies, 90 percent said that hackers breached their company’s computers over the last twelve months (Lawrence & Weber, 2011). Cyber crimes occur when hackers attempt to damage or destroy a computer network or system of company’s data. Criminals will use one of the most harmful systems around. This system is called a zombie. A zombie is

Data breaches are increasingly common as companies are faced with securing a multitude of networks, devices, applications, users, and files used in the course of conducting business. And with global workforces and the rise of cloud computing, security perimeters are more difficult to define than ever before. These issues combine to create a perfect storm – a climate ripe for hackers to take advantage of. (Lord, 2017) Below are the trending data loss trends to watch out for:

Safety of information is the most valuable asset in any organization particular those who provide financial service to others. Threats can come from a variety of sources such as human threats, natural disasters and technical threats. By identifying the potential threats to the network, security measure can be taken to combat these threats, eliminate them or reduce the likelihood and impact if they should occur.

A threat agent is the facilitator of an attack however; a threat is a constant danger to an asset.