Data Breaches Podcast

I’ve just finished listening to the second season of Breach, a podcast about data breaches. It’s supported by Carbonite this season, which is a great piece of cross-promotion. There are few better ways of protecting yourself (as an individual or company) against a data breach than having a reliable back-up. We’re a Carbonite reseller ourselves and can vouch for this product as a safeguard against data breaches. 

We had a client a few years ago who had a run-in with a crypto virus. All their data was locked up behind encryption, with a ransom to be paid if they wanted their data back. They had a local backup but it had stopped working at some point. (This was an issue for us, that we had no ongoing maintenance agreement, and couldn’t prevent things like this from happening. We did eventually tell this client we’d prefer if they found a different IT provider.) They were totally reliant on Carbonite to restore all their data. Apart from taking about a week to restore all the data via download, the experience was seamless. (For more information on backup.)

 

Breach Season One

The first season of Breach details the Yahoo breach. Yahoo had been the Goliath of the internet but its influence had waned. While trying to grow themselves again they had perhaps taken their eye off the ball. They had security flaws that they weren’t aware of. Remarkably, username and password information wasn’t encrypted. This is something that even a WordPress installation will do straight out of the box. 

What makes the first season of Breach so interesting is how it touches on so much of contemporary politics. If you want an insight into how the Russians got US data and potentially used it in the US elections, listen to the whole series and let them creep up on the extended implications of the breach. You’ll be amazed when the penny drops.

Breach Season Two

The second season seemed more insidious to me. The USA’s largest credit data company was hacked due to their own carelessness. They hadn’t applied published security updates to their server. And they had SSL certificates that had expired some 18 months earlier. Hackers were able to waltz in and steal the credit data for the bulk of US citizens.

Both seasons are a great listen. If you want to know more about the world’s largest data breaches give it a go.