Top Data Breaches of 2018 Report

In 2018, we saw some of the largest data breaches of all-time. Just when you thought you’d seen the worst, with the 2017 hack of Equifax resulting in the exposure of 143 million data records, the data breaches of 2018 hit home.

In 2018, Aadhar, lost the data of 1.1 billion human beings; in the same year, Marriott hotels had a data exposure impacting 500 million. When data is lost, the personal information of individuals is left open to fraudulent use and identity theft. But data exposure is not just about massive numbers of data records being stolen. Data theft is also about the loss of Intellectual Property (IP) including trade secrets and source code. Data that materially affects your company, your competitive edge, and even the morale of your employees.

This paper will take a look at some of the biggest data breaches of 2018, including Aadhar, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. We will then delve into what a data breach means to an organization. Such as the impact on share price that has a negative impact for up to 3-years. The loss of business after a reputation has been damaged, post-breach. And, the financial costs to a company when data theft or accidental exposure, occurs.

There are, fortunately, ways to stem the flow of data, of all sorts, from personal to IP. In the final section of this paper, we will explore the use of a socio-technical approach to data breach prevention by applying a combination of tools like Data Loss Prevention (DLP) within a Culture of Security.