In the News
Massive data breaches continue to plague the consumer industry. In Marriott reveals massive database breach affecting up to 500 million hotel guests, Tom Warren at The Verge discusses a data breach at the Marriott owned Starwood Hotels chain. Warren explains that customer financial, passport, and other personal information was exposed going back to 2014. While Warren does confess that the company used Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-128) encryption, he states that the encryption may have been compromised. Law enforcement is beginning an investigation into the occurrence of a data breach to this magnitude.
Our Take
With such a high frequency of data breaches in this day and age, it is easy to become desensitized to the damage that such data breaches can wreak on not only the company involved, but to all of the individual’s whose information is exposed. Personal information of any kind should remain private unless explicit consent is given to release such information. Unfortunately, data breaches and leaks result in customer information being compromised and not all companies react to resolve such a violation in the same way. While some companies may take immediate and extensive measures to identify the source of the data exposure and release such findings when possible, other companies and breaches, such as the Marriott breach may remain more of a mystery concerning scope and source. Such differences in the responses to data breaches highlight the importance for individuals to do their due diligence when it comes to providing their personal information to companies as well as how to act if your information may have been compromised.
Recommendations
How can you protect your personal information in the occurrence of a data breach?
- Understand the risks of putting your personal information into the world, and only share what you have to
- Don’t reuse your account passwords, and take advantage of multi-factor authentication whenever possible
- Minimize the number of accounts that have direct access to your bank account or card numbers
- Track your finances closely to notice suspicious transactions before they become dangerous
- Stay up to date on the news regarding recent data breaches and security flaws to see if you may have been affected