The Thurston, Pierce, Lewis, and Mason Counties IT Experts

This year we decided to keep a detailed ledger of all of the major data breaches to see where organizations dealing with these issues are going wrong. Here is a comprehensive list from the beginning of September. 

September

9/5 

Providence Health Plan - 122,000 members of the Providence Health Plan had personal information leaked when an unauthorized party accessed the company’s servers. Information that was stolen included plan member names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, member ID numbers, and subscriber numbers.

Facebook - Facebook had an unprotected server with over 419 million records accessed.  Users had their Facebook’s user ID and phone number exposed. In some cases, user’s names, genders, and locations were also leaked.

9/16

Dealer Leader, LLC. - 198 million prospective car buyers were left exposed by an unprotected server. The information that was left out there included names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and IPs.

9/27

DoorDash - The popular food delivery app had 4.9 million customers’ information breached by a third-party. The information left exposed included the names, delivery addresses, phone numbers, hashed passwords, order history, and the last four numbers of each’s credit card number. In the same hack, over 100,000 delivery drivers had their driver's license information leaked. 

9/30

Zynga - The mobile game maker, Zynga, the developer of popular mobile games such as Farmville and Words with Friends has announced that 218 million players had their data exposed after their network was breached by a hacker.  The company had player names, email addresses, login IDs, phone numbers, Facebook IDs and more left exposed.

October

10/17 

Methodist Hospitals of Indiana - The Methodist Hospitals of Indiana fell victim to an email phishing scam and it allowed hackers to steal 68,000 records that included names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, and more. 

10/21

Autoclerk - Autoclerk, a hotel property management software developer had an open database infiltrated exposing data that included names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of travel, travel costs, room numbers, and some masked credit card details of hundreds of thousands of guests. 

10/22

Kalispell Regional Healthcare - Over 130,000 Social Security numbers, addresses, medical record numbers, dates of birth, medical histories and treatment information, and names of treating physicians were exposed by hackers.

10/26

Adobe - Data was exposed that included email addresses, usernames, location, Adobe product licenses, account creation dates, and payment statuses. 7.5 million users were affected.

10/27

Network Solutions - The world’s oldest domain name provider has exposed in a hack. Millions of individual’s data that include names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and service information were compromised.

November 

11/9 

Texas Health Resources - The Texas-based health care provider reported a data breach where 82,000 patient records were exposed. Included in the breach were names, addresses, email information, health information, and more. 

11/16 

Magic the Gathering - The popular online strategy game has reported that an unsecured website database has exposed 452,000 player records that include names, usernames, and more. 

11/18

State of Louisiana - The State of Louisiana has been a victim of a ransomware attack that took down many state agencies’ servers. Although no data is said to be lost, the state’s crucial computing infrastructure was down for several days as systems were restored from backup.

Even though there are only 7.7 billion people on the planet, over 8 billion records have been exposed in the first 10 months of 2019. If you would like help keeping your business’ data secure and redundant, reach out to the IT professionals at PC Technologies today at 360-491-2227.

The global cost of cybercrime is on the rise, and is now estimated to be near $600 billion total. Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent which means your cybersecurity needs to be more vigilant. Automation is what is causing these frequent attacks, and the only way to combat this is to fight fire with fire. 

There are a few ways automation does just that. 

Security Automation Has Become Intelligent

Data needs to be processed and analyzed in order to become usable information. Often times, the rate in which data needs to be processed simply cannot be achieved manually. This inability to meet required data processing rates can leave your business vulnerable. 

Look at it this way. Every device on your network, from your workstations, to your servers, to your firewall, your antivirus, and everything else that handles cybersecurity, all generate logs of what goes through them. These logs can help you determine problems and threats on the network, but there tends to be so much data in the logs to go through that a single person can’t be thorough enough to catch everything.

Automation can utilize machine learning and spot anomalies and only report the important things back to IT. This system can also be set up to automatically isolate a device from the rest of the network as soon as a potential problem is detected, to prevent it from spreading.

Automation processes data at a rate which cannot be matched by employees. More so, automation has the ability to learn and adapt. This makes the accuracy in which it processes data unsurpassable.

Automation Cybersecurity Beneficiaries 

Where does automation provide the greatest value in advancing your business’ cybersecurity? 

Data-Supported Interfaces

Without data organization or processing, drawing conclusions or making predictions is a difficult task. Reading and comprehending the data that has been organized by automation ensures you will catch threats more effectively. 

A Stronger Defense Than Offence

Cybersecurity is almost like a game of football. However, if your defense fails the cybercriminal doesn’t get a point on the scoreboard. Instead, they receive all of your data, and your business will experience devastating effects. Cybersecurity relies on defending against threats before they make it far enough down the field. Automation utilizes machine learning and rapid processing rates to protect your business from threats you otherwise never would have seen coming. 

Detecting Threats

When automation is utilized, your business will be able to detect faults in your cybersecurity. Even if your IT staff is on site for eight hours a day, five days a week, if a fault is detected, time is of the essence. You don’t want your business’ data being served on a silver platter over the weekend if a fault is detected and nobody is available to react to the insecurity.

PC Technologies is your local leading expert in cybersecurity. Implementing automation does not need to feel like a troublesome task, in fact it can be quite simple. Our experts have the know-how to optimize your cybersecurity strategy, so call us today at 360-491-2227!

Fiber optic cabling can help everyone to do so. A type of network cable, fiber optic cables contain tiny strands of glass fibers, each wrapped in an insulated casing. These fibers, not much thicker than a human hair, transmit data by providing a pathway for it to travel through. These signals are maintained by the light being reflected by the cladding - a layer of glass that surrounds the core to insulate it.

As you may imagine, this is a very efficient way to transmit data - light is famous for being fast, after all. Furthermore, fiber optic cables can support a higher bandwidth as well as keep transmitted data more stable over longer distances. Now, a lot of the infrastructure that we use every day is supported by fiber optic cabling - including a lot of the Internet, telephone systems, and cable television.

The benefits of using fiber optic cabling include:

• Higher Data Capacities - A fiber optic cable is capable of carrying far more data than copper cables could. Fiber cables can transmit 10 Gbps, 40 Gbps, and 100 Gbps.
• Longer Distance - Light can go much further without losing its strength, eliminating the need for as many signal boosters.
• Less Interference - By its nature, copper cabling is susceptible to external electromagnetic interference, and the shielding that is implemented to prevent this interference isn’t always effective. Fiber optic cable isn’t susceptible, and so interference of this kind isn’t a problem.

This makes fiber-optic cabling the preferred choice for long-distance connections, but some Internet providers use it for direct access for customers. Here are the ways these cables are deployed:

• Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) - Fiber used to deliver media services to residential buildings.
• Fiber to the Building/Block/Premises (FTTB) - This is fiber optic cables used to support commercial buildings.
• Fiber to the Curb of a Node (FTTC/N) - This cable is connected to a node, which then uses copper cables to connect to customers.
• Direct fiber - The is fiber optic cable that runs directly from the central hub to the customer, which costs a pretty penny.
• Shared fiber - Essentially the same as direct fiber, but split to serve multiple customers.

While it is possible to get a fiber optic connection to your business, it is extremely expensive to do - prohibitively expensive, in fact. With the costs that it comes with, it may only become an option if your provider is actively rolling out a new infrastructure.

To learn more about the technology that powers today’s businesses, and how you can put it to use for you, keep reading our blog!