Data Breaches, why are they still happening?
It seems like over the past few years, there have been a never ending slough of bad news around data breaches and our personal information. A recent one just occurred with private health information like "the little-known software company, California-based Meditab, bills itself as one of the leading electronic medical records software makers for hospitals, doctor’s offices, and pharmacies." read more at TechCrunch. Then there was the 2018 credit score debacle, facebook, google, and we can go on and on naming big companies who have had partial or full data breaches.
The question is, outside of internal sabotage, why is this still happening in 2018 and beyond? We have the technology stack to solve the problem and online security to keep it in check. A lot of websites have failures in their code and ssl, especially smaller websites so brush up on your https flaws and install a solid process.
As SSLTrust recently posted - "SSL/TLS is the bedrock of modern security. Just about all security strategies involve it or chain back to it at some point. At its core, the contract is this: something encrypted with a user’s public key can only be decrypted by the corresponding private key, and something encrypted with the user’s private key can only be decrypted by the corresponding public key. From this we derive digital signatures, and communication that cannot be intercepted by a malicious third party who has tapped the line. But what does this mean? Rarely do we get a high-level understanding of the sorts of things criminals would actually do in order to get between the source of a digital communication and its destination." https://www.ssltrust.com.au/blog/route-poisoning
Until all these companies get their heads on straight, I recommend locking your credit scores, posting minimally on social media and use a backup email for any spam related things you may need to sign up for. A website should have SSL & 2-Factor authentication or else your data and transmissions are open to security flaws.