The Patriot Post® · The Increasing Problem of Data Breaches

In what appears to be a never-ending cycle in the digital age, privacy breaches have become a 21st century scourge and the magnitude of these catastrophic events seems only to be getting worse and worse.

A quick examination of the announced breaches in 2017, ranging from Equifax to Yahoo to Verizon, shows that billions (yes, billions) of people have had their data compromised. What’s been a more distressing trend than the staggering number of breaches is the fact that some companies have decided to brazenly hide compromises and only announce them months and, in some cases, years after the initial transgressions have taken place. One of the most recent egregious examples is Uber, the global transportation company based in San Francisco.

Recently released information shows the company waited months to announce the devastating breach and even tried to hide it from its customers and regulators when it paid hackers $100,000 to destroy the stolen data. This still-developing story is the latest episode in a no-win situation that consumers are living with on a daily basis.

Private business isn’t the only offender, though. The FBI reportedly failed to alert victims of Russian hacking.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the responsibility to provide oversight on privacy violations but, like most government agencies, it seems to have been operating in a reactive mode the last few years instead of being proactive. The prevailing thought in Washington, DC, for many years was that private companies and organizations could be trusted to safeguard and protect data from cyberattacks. However, that façade has been thoroughly destroyed the last few years.

The case many experts are concerned about is the Equifax breach. The credit reporting company reported that millions of Americans had data stolen, including “Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers.” To put the numbers in perspective, 143 million citizens is roughly 44% of the population — and a majority of the adult population.

The scenario that was feared when the breach was announced is starting to happen. According to recent reporting, “Criminals are using the stolen information to apply for mortgages, credit cards, student loans, tapping into bank debit accounts, filing insurance claims and racking up substantial debts.”

While many customers want to protect themselves, in many cases they don’t even own the data that is getting stolen. That point was driven home at the most recent Senate Commerce Committee hearings earlier this month when Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) confirmed from Equifax’s interim chief executive officer that companies, not consumers, own the information. This is obviously a problem.

What is the way forward? Companies must do a better job of protecting data, and they should be held accountable for negligent actions that put citizens’ data at risk. Perhaps new legislation is needed to protect individual information, or perhaps the FTC should be given more resources and manning to combat this threat to national security. New measures and personnel would give the agency time to develop new standards that all businesses would adhere to as well as enable the FTC to impose strict penalties for non-compliance. Only when private businesses are held accountable will behavior change.

Another key step in protecting consumers is the implementation of multifactor authentication and stronger cryptography. The main reason data is at risk is because it is accessible through weak passwords, which in some cases are easily hacked. A recent industry report showed that the vast majority of business are still relying upon passwords to protect critical data. Businesses must invest in new technology or they will find themselves at serious risk of being breached.

The proliferation of technology in everyone’s day to day life has led to many positive developments but it has also created some ugly negatives. Data breaches are one of those undesirable results but it’s an issue that can be resolved if the right steps are taken to combat the problem.