Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

We’ve always been vocal about the imminent threat of breaches and propagated the message that irrespective of the size of your business, the industry you’re in, or your geography, you can be subject to a security breach. And unfortunately, history repeats itself often. On May 11, 2020, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (NTT), a large telecommunications company, revealed that attackers may have stolen data from its internal systems, affecting over 600 customers.

Misconfigurations are often seen as an easy target, as it can be easy to detect on misconfigured web servers, cloud and applications and then becomes exploitable, causing significant harm and leading to catastrophic data leakage issues for enterprises like the 2019 Teletext exposure of 530,000 data files which was caused by an insecurely configured Amazon Web Service (AWS) web server.

In 2020, the chances of falling victim to data breaches are increasing. Keeping customers in the loop can be costly, time-consuming but very necessary and important to help prevent loss of personal data and decrease the risk of fraud. Cyber-attacks and data breaches can rarely be kept quiet and if the incident occurs at a high profile organisation, it’s only a matter of time before it makes the news.

EasyJet, CapitalOne, British Airways and Marriott are all huge companies with equally large budgets. Another thing they have in common is they all fell victim to a serious data breach, costing them hundreds of millions of pounds. If the major players with a lot of resources to devote to cyber security still get hacked, do SMEs with limited budgets stand a chance? It’s a dramatic question, so let’s explore the answer.

The increasing number of third-party data breaches and the sensitive information they expose have negatively impacted consumer trust. Third-party breaches occur when sensitive data is stolen from a third-party vendor or when their systems are used to access and steal sensitive information stored on your systems. In today's interconnected economy, companies rely on third-parties.

Babylon Health, makers of a smartphone app that allows Brits to have consultations with NHS doctors, has admitted that a “software error” resulted in some users being able to access other patients’ private video chats with GPs.

What is Lateral Movement? Lateral movement refers to the techniques that a cyber-attacker uses, after gaining initial access, to move deeper into a network in search of sensitive data and other high-value assets. Lateral movement techniques are widely used in sophisticated cyber-attacks such as advanced persistent threats (APTs).

Data is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable assets in the modern world. The digital giants that monopolize data are arguably the most powerful companies in the world, prompting ongoing conversations about anti-trust legislation and digital privacy. Despite the overwhelming value controlled by these entities, as we'll see, even companies such as Facebook are vulnerable to the byproduct of the rapid move to digitization – the data breach epidemic.