{"id":64952,"date":"2016-05-11T15:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/en\/blog\/?p=64952"},"modified":"2025-01-07T11:37:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T09:37:58","slug":"data-leak-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/data-leak-vulnerability","title":{"rendered":"These 6 practices make businesses especially vulnerable to data leaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-64953 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/practices-that-lead-to-data-leaks-1024x707.png\" alt=\"6 practices that lead to data leaks\" width=\"1024\" height=\"707\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/practices-that-lead-to-data-leaks-1024x707.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/practices-that-lead-to-data-leaks-300x207.png 300w, https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/practices-that-lead-to-data-leaks-768x530.png 768w, https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/practices-that-lead-to-data-leaks.png 1700w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><br \/>\nMost companies are not wondering <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">if<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> they will eventually have a data breach, the question on their minds is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">when<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Seagate, Snapchat and Slack are at the epicenter of headlines after <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/krebsonsecurity.com\/2016\/02\/phishers-spoof-ceo-request-w2-forms\/#more-33969\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">phishing attacks<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and carelessness led to the leak of both company credentials as well as thousands of employee\u2019s personal information.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What happened at Snapchat<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">February 2016: Cybercriminals went phishing and came home with a whale. Pretending to be the Snapchat CEO, they <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/security\/2016\/02\/payroll-data-leaked-for-current-former-snapchat-employees\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sent an email<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to an HR employee, requesting payroll data on their employees. Not noticing that this was an external email address, the employee emailed the data to the cybercriminals, compromising their employee\u2019s identities. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What happened at Seagate <\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">March 2016: <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/krebsonsecurity.com\/2016\/03\/seagate-phish-exposes-all-employee-w-2s\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Spearphishing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> tricked a company employee into emailing all current and former employee\u2019s W-2 forms to a scammer. This information includes Social Security numbers, salaries and other sensitive employee information that gives cybercriminals all they need to commit tax return fraud. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What happened at Slack<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">April 2016: Slack, the popular cloud-based team chat and file-sharing collaboration tool is used by companies of all sizes. Recently, some lazy developers have gotten into trouble for accidentally <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibtimes.co.uk\/why-your-slack-messages-arent-private-you-think-1557523\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">leaking their firm\u2019s Slack credentials<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to GitHub, one of the primary public code repositories. Using a relatively simple method, over 1,500 accounts ranging in size from small to Fortune 500 companies were at risk exposing every message from their company chat. Slack has since blocked the exposed accounts, but it doesn\u2019t prevent future programmers from making the same mistake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What these events have in common: They are <\/span><b>predictable<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>preventable<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>6 common practices that make businesses vulnerable to online data leaks<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/strong-password\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">predictable passwords<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: In 2015 AND 2014, the most popular passwords were \u201c123456\u201d and \u201cpassword\u201d. Please leave your predictions for 2016 in the comments below.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not updating passwords regularly<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using the same password for multiple accounts<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Employees leaving the company and taking passwords with them<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Employees sharing passwords across non-secure networks such as Facebook, email, Skype. One employee leaving their password-free smartphone in a taxi could open the door to cybercriminals. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Programmers sharing credentials or tokens on Github<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Practices that can help companies stop data leaks<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Regularly run an id\/login audit. Any credentials that were used by employees who are no longer with the company should be immediately terminated.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Educate employees on cyber security basics. Teach them to update their apps and software with the latest security patches. Teach them how to recognize phishing attempts and offer them support.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Update company policy: Require new passwords every 30-60 days and install a password generator on company computers. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boost <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/mobile\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mobile security<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; as many companies have a BYOD policy that allows employees to bring their personal devices behind the firewall, malicious apps and software can utilize wireless networks to attack the system.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most companies are not wondering if they will eventually have a data breach, the question on their minds is when. Seagate, Snapchat and Slack are at the epicenter of headlines after phishing attacks and carelessness led to the leak of both company credentials as well as thousands of employee\u2019s personal information. What happened at Snapchat [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.10 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>These 6 things make businesses vulnerable to data leaks | WOT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Keep your business protected with WOT. Read about the 6 practices that make your business vulnerable to data leaks to help keep yours safe. Learn more here!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mywot.com\/blog\/data-leak-vulnerability\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"These 6 things make businesses vulnerable to data leaks | WOT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Keep your business protected with WOT. Read about the 6 practices that make your business vulnerable to data leaks to help keep yours safe. 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