Sony CEO Apologizes for Data Breach

Last week, Sony announced that 24.6 million names, addresses, e-mails, birth dates, phone numbers, potentially credit cards and other private information from Sony Online Entertainment accounts could have been taken from company servers or from an old database.

Last month,  a hacker attack on the PlayStation Network may have caused the stealing of data from 77 million user accounts.

This totals over 100 million accounts that were potentially compromised.  Each potentially affected customer will get $1 million in identity theft insurance. 

Sony CEO, Howard Stringer, apologized for “inconvenience” and “concern” the data breach has caused. The company is working on restoring full and safe service as soon as possible. Stringer has a lot of brand mending to do as this breach is being referred to as one of the largest Internet security break-ins in history. 

88% of Breaches Involve Insider Negligence

Malicious acts only account for 12% of reported breaches. Preventing the negligent acts, which are the cause of a breach 88% of the time, is much easier than trying to stop someone who is actively attempting to steal data. By creating an risk strategy and putting DLP policies and an Enterprise DLP (eDLP) technology into place, an organization can protect itself from negligent data loss.

Someone maliciously trying to steal data has a high likelihood of success. If organizations can effectively stop the easy stuff, the negligent leaks, they will achieve a much higher risk reduction than if their focus is simply to stop malicious acts. 

Two in Five Social Networkers Have Been Sent Malware

Does this alarm you? It should. Malware can take over your browser, redirect your searches, deliver frustrating pop-up ads, and slow down the performance of your PC. These effects are not only annoying, they are costly to remove. Think upwards of $50 per effected PC and even more for malware removal on a server. 

Approximately half of US employees can use social networks from their work machine without any restrictions. Total bans on access to social networking sites is becoming rare as firms recognize the value such sites can bring in raising brand awareness and promoting social media marketing campaigns.

"Over the year, we saw an average of 30,000 new malicious URLs every day - that's one every two to three seconds. More than 70 percent of these are legitimate websites that have been hacked - this means that businesses and website owners could inadvertently be infecting their patrons unintentionally and without their knowledge." 

- Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant, Sophos

So what’s a solution that will allow you to continue realizing the benefits of social media while protecting your organization from malware? Can your current anti-malware solution keep up with the 30,000 new malicious URLs per day? A data loss prevention solution with real-time security scanning is ideal. This technology detects threats and analyzes user-generated content in real-time as it is posted to blogs and Facebook pages, to protect visitors from being exposed to malicious links and spam. Real-time scanning can allow you to continue reaping the benefits of using social networks while preventing nasty malware from slowing you down.