Risk of a Data Breach

We live in scary times. And we aren’t just talking about huge heists or mass shootings, we are also talking about cyber crimes, which have proven time and time again to have a huge impact on enterprises—and have even ruined organizations. Cyber crimes can range from identity theft to financial crimes to data breaches, all of which can make any individual or organization a little paranoid.

Let’s look at Time Warner Cable, one of the biggest cable companies in the country, who was also in the news due to a possible data breach that potentially involved up to 320,000 customers whose email and password details were stolen. Visit here to learn more about the TWC data breach.

While the company was proactive in alerting their customers of the possible data breach, and faced the negative media that was likely to follow, a lot could have been done to prevent such a breach. Read more about how hackers and other cyber criminals target enterprises.

Improve Your Security Controls

Here are some ways that Time Warner Cable and other enterprises can improve their security tactics, become more proactive with security protection and prevention, and reduce the risk of a data breach.

1. Be Proactive: By setting up a platform or pattern of prevention and response, an organization or individual can significantly reduce their risk of a security attack or data breach. But this also means being proactive. By being pro-active instead of re-active, organizations can establish workflows, tighter security controls, and other security measures in order to prevent and/or reduce their risk of an attack or other threat.

2. Identify identity-centric security: For any enterprise in the identity security sector, you know that identity-centric security is of the utmost importance. For those who are still developing this mind frame, it’s best to consider your current security practices and perform a little risk management and response in order to identify where your greatest identity security risks lie.

For example, the biggest security risk for most organizations lies within password management and employees. By properly training employees and educating them about insider security risks and best practices, they will likely take more password management ownership, significantly reducing the risk of cyber threats and a series of security events within your organization.

3. Sense Something PHISHY: IT departments in organizations can also be proactive by staying ahead of “phishing” scams. For example, an organization might alert employees about the typical fraudulent email messages that come through onto the company’s server. The worst part about it is that many phishing scams look like they are from legitimate organizations or other contacts, fooling even the most tech-savvy employee, putting your organization at high risk for an attack.

Again, training and education is crucial here. By alerting employees on the possible “phishing” scams, you can arm your employees with the “weapons” they need to recognize these scams and stay smarter.

4. Security in a SNAP: The bad news is data security breaches and other malicious security events won’t be slowing down anytime in the near future. Organizations and individuals alike will be at risk for cyber attacks for the foreseeable future. But the good news is there are more options for security control tactics and prevention methods available more than ever before.

For example, let’s look at MugShot, one product available with LogmeOnce.com. This feature will actually take a photo of a cyber criminal and hacker as they attempt to acquire illegal and unauthorized access into an individual or employee’s computer system.

Check out here to learn more about MugShot in a SNAP.

5. Enter the Data Encryption Dimension: If your organization does not implement any data encryption methods, then this could be a recipe for disaster. Even if your organization uses the cloud, or another form of file-sharing software (such as Dropbox), you still need to ensure your own security methods and practices to ensure your data and files really are protected.

Tightening Security Tactics and Control Shouldn’t Mean Compromising the User Experience.

We know what you are probably thinking. Yes, these are all great points about tightening security controls in your organization, but what about user convenience and accessibility? Taking more control over your organization’s security and tightening security tactics doesn’t have to mean compromising user experience. In fact, it shouldn’t!

By using single sign-on capabilities, users can use a password manager to store and remember their passwords, and easily set up multiple devices to use single sign-on, which minimizes the needs to enter and re-enter password or access credentials.

Finally, tightening security controls and implementing methods in order to reduce the risk of a data breach doesn’t have to be timely or expensive. For more information on where to find an identity and security management solution for your business, check out LogmeOnce.