Brighline is a virtual counseling service that provides help to children, teenagers, and whole families. This pediatric counseling service offers a range of mental health care services to patients throughout the world. Brightline stores a significant amount of personal data to maintain these patient records and offer reliable care, but the company recently suffered from a dangerous data breach, exposing hundreds of thousands of patient records to the internet.

A lot of us are fascinated with technology. Any form or mention of the subject piques an interest or at least a glance of curiosity. Unfortunately, we must endure the dark side of technology as well. From the beginning of the computer age, there have always been hackers who could match their criminal expertise to current technologies. Some hackers are concerned with small scams and easy entry points.

Data breaches are harmful to the companies they hit as well as their customers, and this week telecommunications and networking companies were hit especially hard. T-Mobile and AT&T both suffered from serious breaches that put their customers at risk of being exposed. Networking giant CommScope was the victim of a vicious ransomware attack, putting network infrastructure technology at risk. Grocery chain Albertson's and dating sites were also exposed this week.

CommScope is a massive tech company with more than 30,000 employees. The organization works with companies around the world and helps to establish network infrastructure systems for hospitals, schools, federal agencies, and more. CommScope is based out of Hickory, North Carolina, and has been in business since 1976. The massive company has an annual revenue of 9.23 billion USD and manages substantial networks for businesses throughout the United States.

T-Mobile is a telecommunications brand used throughout the United States, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. The company provides text messaging services, voice communication, mobile data, and more for millions of customers. T-Mobile has been in business since 1999 and is well-known as a leading communications brand in the United States, and now we're learning the company isn't secure.

Communications company AT&T offers email services to many of its customers. Those emails have recently been compromised by way of an interesting exploit that is costing customers millions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrency. AT&T customers are having their email accounts attacked, and those exploited email accounts are being used to steal additional data and to access cryptocurrency exchange accounts, which is a very serious issue for the impacted users.

A few very personal and private specialized dating sites were recently hit by data attacks that have led to users being exposed and potentially released onto the internet. Sites CityJerks and TruckerSuckers both experienced data breaches from the same individual who is attempting to sell the stolen data. The information taken from these accounts is highly private and personal, and anyone involved in this breach is likely to be unhappy about having their data exposed.

Albertsons is a major grocery chain in the United States. The company is based in Boise, Idaho, and oversees a huge range of different grocery stores throughout the country. Stores like Star Market, Tom Thumb, Acme, Safeway, Vons, Balduccis, Food Lover's Market, Shaw's, Albertsons, and more.

The Cyber Kill Chain is a significant piece of work from Lockheed Martin in 2011. The Chain outlines seven essential points at which an IT team can intercept a cyberattack. Numerous experts took the process a bit further to eight steps: “reconnaissance, weaponization, delivery, exploitation, installation, command and control, actions on the objective, and monetization.”

Kimco Realty is a major real estate investment company based in Jericho, NY. The company specializes in developing shopping centers and helps businesses obtain the commercial real estate they need for grocery stores and other plazas. The company focuses on metropolitan locations primarily and maintains a staff of about 630 employees while generating more than $1.7 billion in annual revenue.