Information Security Breach Case Study

The nature of this event describes an internal breach of security in order to access and manipulate sensitive data. This internal breach was caught by the auditor, but the communications from the auditor to those who’s data was breached was intercepted.

A1. The Nature of the incident was that an employee was able to hack into the computer system and gain access to the financial payroll system, human resources and even email system. This employee used several methods in order to gain access into the system: IP spoofing, Data modification, Man in the middle attack and compromised-key attack. As a result the employee was able to tamper with payroll system. An auditor discovered the discrepancies and tried to make upper management aware of the situation through email, but the email was intercepted by the hacker. The hacker impersonated an employee and persuaded the auditor into granting him more access into the system which resulted in additional sabotage into the payroll system. Hacker

This analysis discusses some issues and requirements to correct these issues that are outlined in the Turn Key University (TKU) data breach case study. In addition to these issues and requirements, some applicable laws will be discussed and some controls will be suggested for implementation.

In 2006 AOL, inadvertently, made public personal information, of some 650,000 of its members. “The members filed suit with California federal district court, on behalf of themselves and a putative nationwide class of AOL members, alleging violations of federal electronic privacy law, 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a). A subclass of AOL members who are California residents also alleged various violations of California law, including the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act, California Civil Code § 1770.” (Doe 1 v AOL LLC, 2009)

The purpose of this meeting is to inform you of a security breach that occurred in our company, and to inform you of what has been affected, how we found out, and what measures have been used to correct and prevent this from happening again. The following is a bulleted list of relevant information related to the security breach.

California’s SB 1386 takes the FTC’s efforts one step further by requiring companies to notify California residents when a security lapse has resulted in disclosure of personal information so that immediate action may be taken to mitigate damages. In 2002, the California state employee payroll database was breached. Confidential information about 265,000 employees was available to hackers including names, addresses, bank account numbers, and social security numbers. The data center didn’t notify anyone for several weeks, leaving the employees vulnerable to identity theft longer than necessary. In response, SB 1386 was enacted as a means to ensure that Californians receive prompt notification so they may take immediate steps to protect their personal information.

The first point of analysis is related to National Data Breach reporting which main goal is to protect consumers against identity theft and incentivize businesses for better cyber security. Businesses are required to inform the consumers if the intruder had access to the consumers’ personal information in order to prevent further damage or loss. The information security policy of State of Maryland is set forth to provide any data breach incident

Ensuring the security of organizational and employee information is vital for any organization. Security misfortune can be damaging to the organization and the affected employees. In the case of Huffman Trucking information stored in the database includes names, social security numbers, and personal employee information used for the Benefits Election System. The cost of loss of such information typically results in the same outcome - the loss of financial resources or the harm to one's information. In an effort to

In 2013, target corporation experienced a serious data breach where its security, as well as the payment system,was breached. The security breach was so intense in which case; it compromised over 40 million credit as well as debit card numbers. Furthermore, 70 million phone numbers, addresses, and other personal information was affected(Krebs, 2014).The attack was made without the knowledge of Target Corp. until mid-December when the department of defense notified the company that its system was being attacked. One problem that came out clear, in this case, was the fact that Target Corp. had been notified of the attack

Moreover, now days using information system is not as walking as in the park, it has many new security treats that the company might lose their confidential data, financial and personal information.

Confidentiality must be met in the storage, processing, and transmission of data in an organization. For example, we are going to look at a major recent data breach. On March 8, 2017, the US department of homeland security sent Equifax and notice to patch a vulnerability in versions of the Apache Struts software. On March 9, Equifax dispersed the information to applicable personnel. Although told to apply the patch, Equifax security team did not find

All the consumers affected were also made vulnerable to subsequent identity theft given malicious attackers stole their personal data. Equifax was directly affected since its stock began to plunge immediately the news was made public. Additionally, the corporate governance of the company was tarnished given three Equifax executives sold shares worth around $2 million days after the breach discovery, and the “retiring” of the chief security information officers is questionable (Surane & Melin, 2017). Also, the company was exposed to litigations with some lobbyists and interest groups pushing regulators to hold Equifax accountable for the negligence and poor treatment of affected consumers. The proposed new data security laws will present a greater burden to other corporations. Two such laws are the Promoting Responsible Oversight of Transactions and Examinations of Credit Technology (PROTECT), and Freedom From Equifax Exploitation (FREE) will attract more government scrutiny and limit the type of personal data that companies can collect from customers (Alperan, Carter, & Sofio, 2017).

Data breaches happen daily, in too many places at once to keep count. But there is some huge breach versus a small one and we will take some examples from the biggest or most significant breaches of the 21st century to show how much risk or damage the breach caused for companies, insurers and users or account holders.

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

Individuals and corporations that are the victims of an organizations data theft may elect to sue the business for damages. As well as the legal costs involved, if the court rules in favor of the prosecution, then the business will be liable for the damages incurred. This has the potential to put the company out of business. Organizations will need to meet the compliance requirements of one or more Acts, depending upon their vertical industry. The requirement, which is broad-based, is to ensure customer privacy. This is essential to prevent personal details such as social security information, addresses, credit card information, and more, being divulged through data