Third-party vendor data breaches are becoming an epidemic for organizations that themselves have solid information security programs. The Ponemon Institute has proven year over year in its survey that the cost of third-party data breaches increases with each survey. Many struggle with how exactly to hold third-party vendors accountable and enforce the same rigid standards and controls that they consume internally. The big question is: how do organizations prevent third-party vendor data breaches?

New technologies often present interesting challenges for security teams, with cloud services such as AWS, Azure and GCP providing particularly novel cases in comparison to “classic” on-premise systems. As cloud services race to add new features that drive new customer interest and increase retention of existing clients, there is a very real risk of exposing new threat vectors to the business if even the most minor of misconfigurations occurs.

Last year was a disaster in terms of the number of data breaches. A study produced by the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center rounded up 1,473 reported data breaches by the end of 2019 – a staggering 17% more than 2018. While the analysis notes that the actual number of data exposed were considerably less than 2018, it’s still proof of the increasing insecurity of deployed IT systems.

There are several types of data or information that can be leaked during a data breach. This include: Though hackers are fast and sophisticated in their operations, nevertheless, some best practices and efficient security tools can help organizations and individuals contain this problem. Here is some help.

In the age of the digital world, cyber threats and vulnerabilities have gained the attention of security leaders as well as countries across the globe. The issue of cyber warfare is no longer limited to organizations. Rather, even state-sponsored cyber-attacks are being organized and launched against enemy states.

Over 10 million people who have stayed at MGM Resorts hotels – including Twitter boss Jack Dorsey and pop idol Justin Bieber – have had their personal details posted online by hackers. The security breach, publicised by ZDNet and security researcher Under the Breach, saw the records of 10,683,188 former guests – including names, postal addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and email addresses – made available in an online data dump.

The City of Waco has warned residents that their online payments for water services may have been intercepted by hackers who stole credit card details. The heart of the problem lies in the third-party online payment software that Waco and several other cities and municipalities use to let residents pay their bills, pay parking fines, as well as make other financial transactions.

While countless companies have found themselves in the headlines after being breached over the last decade, there are also many companies we never hear about. Why is that? What makes them so unique that they were never successfully breached before? Is it that they have top of the line security technology? Is it that they don't have assets that attackers care about? Or is it that they've just gotten lucky thus far? None of those common misconceptions are likely the true reason.

Facebook and Twitter have announced that personal data related to hundreds of users may have been improperly accessed after users logged into third-party Android apps with their social media accounts. According to a report by CNBC, users of Android apps that made use of a software development kit (SDK) named oneAudience may have unwittingly shared information such as their email addresses, usernames and recent tweets.

Yet another company has been found lacking when it comes to securing its consumers’ data. Utah-based InfoTrax Systems provides back-end services to multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) such as dōTERRA, ZanGo, and LifeVantage, providing website portals where individuals can register as a distributor, sign-up new distributors, and place orders for themselves and end consumers.