Biggest Cybersecurity Breaches of Past and How to Avoid Making Similar Mistakes

Data has become the most valuable asset for a business enterprise in today’s world of information technology. That’s the reason why cybercriminals are targeting data by infiltrating through businesses’ security system. Technology is advancing at the rate of knots, and it is challenging to simultaneously keep up with the latest trends in technology and also maintain high-end security.

In this race for supremacy, businesses often compromise on cybersecurity, and this lethal mistake comes back to haunt them in the shape of a data breach. There are many online cybersecurity programs designed to help businesses implement high-end cybersecurity solutions, yet still, the lack of awareness and mistakes from businesses often leads to their demise.

Why Cyber Breaches Are an Issue?

As data is the most valuable business asset, a data security breach results in a massive loss of revenue, intellectual property losses, and severely damages the reputation of the business entity. That’s not all, there are also many hidden costs involved including legal fees, regulatory fines, and the cost of investigating and rectifying the cybersecurity vulnerability.

Quite often, cybercriminals aren’t only after the money and want to vandalize the website, this severely damages the business’s online entity. That’s why it is essential to address the warning signs and take the appropriate measures needed to mitigate such cybersecurity issues and risks.

Top 5 Cyber Breaches of the Past

Billions of people and online users suffer due to data security breach, and this leads to the loss of valuable private information and financial credentials. Identity fraud is becoming more and more common due to such cybersecurity breaches, and the information of the online users is more at risk than ever before. Here are the 5 major cyber breaches that shocked the online world and damaged interconnectivity.

• Friend Finder Network

Friend Finder Networks suffered a massive data breach in October. 2016 resulting in the data exploitation of over 412 million accounts. The severity of this cyber breach was amplified by the nature of the website and the content. Over 20+ years of data were stolen in this cyber breach including passwords, email addresses, and usernames.

The use of an inadequate SHA-1 protection algorithm led to this cyber data breach. If the professionals in charge of Friend Finder Network Security would have put the knowledge of online cybersecurity programs to use and implemented a more protected algorithm, this entire fiasco would have been avoided.

• Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo is a Chinese social networking platform that suffered a massive cyber breach in March 2020. Over 538 Million user accounts were compromised in the data security breach, and the confidential information such as location, usernames, and phone numbers was sold on the dark web. The root cause of this data breach is still unknown and the problem is still being investigated.  

• First American Financial Corp

First American Financial Corp. comes next in line as it suffered one of the biggest cyber breaches of all-time in July 2019. The confidential records of over 885 Million people were leaked by the company including bank statements, account numbers, tax records, mortgage, social security numbers, and driver license images.

Anyone with a web browser could have accessed these records without the need for any authentication. Inadequate cybersecurity system with weak layers of defense was certainly the root cause of this cyber breach.

• Equifax

The nature of the company and the loss of confidential data makes this cybersecurity breach among the most devastating security breaches of all time. In July 2017, one of the U.S largest credit bureaus suffered a data breach exploiting the confidential information of about 148 million consumers.

This cybersecurity incident was triggered by a web application vulnerability, and the compromised data included birth dates, addresses, driver license numbers, and social security numbers. Among these, about 209K consumers’ credit card details were also stolen.

• Yahoo

Yahoo tops almost every list of top cybersecurity breaches of all-time. As in 2013, it suffered the biggest cybersecurity breach resulting in the exploitation of real names, birth dates, email addresses, and phone numbers of over 3 billion Yahoo users. A large number of hashed passwords were mainly targeted and compromised in this cybersecurity breach. In addition to users’ data exploitation, this led to a severe devaluation of the company as this shredded $350 million of its value.

How to Avoid Cyber Breach?

Data security breaches have almost become inevitable among businesses using outdated and weak security measures. The only way to minimize the risks of a cybersecurity breach is to implement a robust security solution. It is also pivotal to train and empower your workforce with the essential cybersecurity knowledge through online cybersecurity bootcamp to mitigate the risks of security flaws and mistakes. Addressing vulnerabilities and identifying security threats is the only way to avoid a cybersecurity breach.