Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

New companies are hurt by significant data breaches every week, especially in the United States. This week insurance companies were the big target. Prudential, Progressive, and a range of insurance providers that work with PH Tech were all hit by data breaches. Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and the Colorado Department of Higher Education were also victims of their own data breaches. Millions of individuals were exposed to potential data losses between these different breaches.

Prudential Insurance Company of America is one of the largest financial services and insurance companies in the United States today. The organization is based in Newark, New Jersey, and manages over $1.377 trillion in assets for consumers in the US. The company employs over 39,000 workers and handles data for countless customers each year. Each of those customers was potentially damaged when Prudential suffered a serious data breach that released confidential information to attackers.

Progressive is a large insurance company based in Mayfield Village, Ohio. The company is known throughout the United States and other parts of the world and is responsible for insuring many US citizens. The organization employs over 49,000 workers and generates an estimated $48 billion in annual revenue. Since Progressive is an insurance company, it handles personal data, medical information, and other sensitive details about individuals.

Data breach attacks are serious problems for companies, organizations and institutions all over the world. For example, in the US one data breach costs on average 9.4 Million USD, which is the highest worldwide. To handle—or ideally, prevent—these attacks, we need to understand first the “why” and “how” of an attack. With this objective in mind, Bitsight analyzed more than 17,000 data breach events from the last seven years affecting 23 sectors in the US.

The Colorado Department of Higher Education is the government organization responsible for overseeing public education throughout the state. The organization implants most education-related policies and also manages data for educational institutions. This organization recently suffered from a significant data breach, leading to information losses for students associated with public schools throughout Colorado. It's an issue that could result in widespread data losses.

Allegheny County is the second largest county in Pennsylvania, behind Philadelphia County. It is located in Southwest Pennsylvania and has approximately 1.2 million residents. This large county was the recent victim of a data breach, which means many of the county residents could be at risk of being exposed. Learn the details about this potentially disastrous data loss and who should react to the attack to protect themselves from future issues.

PH Tech is a specialized services company that works with health insurance companies providing some of their business and administrative services. The company employs 211 people and serves a variety of businesses throughout Oregon and other locations. Because this company manages insurance enrollment, various customer service tasks, and payment services, the organization handles a great deal of personal and medical data that could have been exposed during the latest data breach.

Each week we look at the data losses, hacker attacks, and the state of security in the United States and around the world. This week things seem to be particularly bleak. We always expect to see some breaches in major companies, but this week we learned about widespread employee credential losses in countless corporations throughout the United States and the world.

Fairfax Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, or Fairfax OMS, is a dental practice that first opened in Burke, Virginia, in 1980. The organization offers a mix of dental surgery services, such as bone grafting, wisdom tooth extraction, dental implants, and more. The organization accepts patients in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and six separate locations throughout Virginia. There are more than 87 employees in the organization, and it generates about $16 million in annual revenue.