Blue Karma Security

Target

Breach Stats: As part of Target’s ongoing forensic investigation, it has been determined that certain guest information — separate from the payment card data previously disclosed — was taken during the data breach,” the company said in a statement released Friday morning.  “This theft is not a new breach, but was uncovered as part of the ongoing investigation. At this time, the investigation has determined that the stolen information includes names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses for up to 70 million individuals.

The Details: On November 27th-December 15th, 2013, during the heat of Christmas holiday shopping, there was unauthorized access to payment card data.

Lessons Learned: The National Association of Federal Credit Unions has sent a letter to congressional leaders for retailers to be subject to the same standards of data security as the banking industry.

CorporateCarOnline.com

Breach Stats: 850,000 records stolen
The Details: Personal details, credit card numbers, and other PII from some of the biggest American names in professional sports, entertainment, Fortune 500 business, and politics were all stolen in this juicy heist of a plain text archive held by this company that develops a SaaS database solution for limo services across the country. Some of the big names on the list include Tom Hanks, Sen. Tom Daschle, and Donald Trump.

Lessons Learned:

Meanwhile, the company at hand paid absolutely no regard to the security of the information, without even trying to take the most basic of cryptographic measures to protect it.

Adobe

Breach Stats: Nearly 3 million PII records, more than 150 million username/password combos, and source code from Adobe Acrobat, ColdFusion, ColdFusion Builder and other unspecified products were stolen.
The Details: This is the breach that just keeps unraveling as the hits keep coming more than a month after the compromise was first disclosed. Originally just though a compromise of 3 million PII records, it’s now clear that Adobe is contending with the loss of a vast trove of login credentials, and, more startlingly, its source code.

Lessons Learned: Not only is the still-unfolding Adobe story a good teaching moment for how thoroughly a company can be owned by attackers once they’ve established a foothold in a corporate network, it’s also a lesson on how dependent the entire enterprise ecosystem is on the security of its software supply chain. The potential ramifications could ripple out for a long while yet as a result of this breach.

U.S. Department Of Energy

Breach Stats: PII stolen for 53,000 former and current DOE employees
The Details: Attackers targeted DOE Info, the agency’s outdated, publicly accessible system built on ColdFusion for the office of its CFO. DOE officials say the breach was limited to PII about employees.

Lessons Learned: There were two big lessons here. First, patching always has been and always will be paramount. Second, organizations must think about reducing their attack surfaces by reconsidering, which systems connected to sensitive databases, should be left open on publicly facing websites.

Advocate Medical Group

Breach Stats: 4 million patient records stolen
The Details: The theft of four computers from offices owned by this medical company exposed more than 4 million patient records in what officials are calling the second-largest loss of unsecured health information since notification to the Department of Health and Human Services became mandatory in 2009.

Lessons Learned: Health-care breaches are dominating the 2013 breach disclosure list thus far, but this one in particular is the most egregious. With patient records dating back to the 1990s compromised from a physical computer theft, it is clear that the basics in physical security, endpoint security, encryption, and data protection were all deficient. In particular, endpoint theft and loss in health-care issues seems to come up time and time again. It may be time for these organizations to reconsider how much data an endpoint is allowed to download and store from centralized databases.

Blue Karma Security is here to recommend the most reliable comprehensive MFT and DLP/Encryption Solution to protect your company from these horrific data breaches. Whether you deploy in the cloud, VMware or On-Premise we can assist in what would be the best solution for you.