By ADuch -

2011 was a record breaking year for data breaches. Will 2012 be the same? If companies do not tighten up their security, it may just be.

In recent news, another popular website fell victim to a cyber-attack.  Zappos.com, an online shoe and clothing retailer, was hacked by an unknown criminal who was able to tap into their internal network/systems through one of the company’s servers in Kentucky. So what exactly was stolen?

According to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, the unknown criminal genius was able to nab customer names, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, the last four digits on their credit card number, and a “cryptographically scrambled” version of their website password. In response to this, Zappos immediately emailed its 24 million customers explaining the situation at hand. They also advised their customers to reset their current Zappos passwords and to change their passwords on any other website that uses the same email address.

At this moment, Zappos does not know when they were attacked. Nor do they know how long the attacker had access to their internal networks. What they do know is that they will be temporarily closing their phone lines and answering all questions through email.

Although this was not a heavy breach, the attack still hurts the company. It disrupts the company’s activity, performance, and it ultimately affects their customers.

For more on the attack on Zappos, click here.

By Erik Small -

just how secure.. is your security?

I just figured I’d share with the group some recent data and security breach news stories from the last few days…does it ever end?

• Snooping through the Power Socket (BBC)
• Elance hit by Security Breach (TechCrunch)
• Someone Call Security (Twitter)
• Questions on Cloud Security (Network World)

By Hugh Garber -

Here’s a very insightful article posted on the ITC Review blog written by Gary Shottes, President of the Ipswitch File Transfer Division.
Here are a few quotes from the article that really make you contemplate rules and regulations that force companies to take responsibilities for a data breach…. Not to mention the positive outlook that technology is available to be deployed by organizations to protect sensitive company information:
“Many companies experience data breaches yet fail to tell their clients, let alone the authorities or police. The reason for this is due to the fact that the majority of companies realise they would expect to lose customers immediately, on a massive scale, if a data breach was revealed.
Security experts agree that employees not only need to change the way that they handle data but they also need to invest in software capable of controlling the movement.
File transfer provides the ability to encrypt files making it even harder for data breaches…. Hospitals, retail outlets and insurance companies are discovering the benefits of using these products to securely transfer data, especially with the size of the data being transferred and the ease of which transfers can be automated.“