Just about every American – man, woman, and yes even children, have fallen victim to the relentless cyber-attacks that have exposed our personal data to the dark web. It is a seemingly never-ending fight, and even when it’s not our own devices being compromised, the data we provide to the companies that are supposed to keep it protected can still end up losing our private and personal information.
T-Mobile is just the most recent victim of a massive cyber attack which resulted in approximately 7.8 million current postpaid customer accounts whose data was exposed. This data includes first and last names, date of birth, social security numbers, and driver’s license/ID information which was stolen in the hack. Since the attack occurred on August 17th, an additional 5.3 million current postpaid customer accounts that had one or more associated customer names, addresses, date of births, phone numbers, IMEIs and IMSIs illegally accessed.
For those accounts that were compromised T-Mobile has offered 2 years of McAfee’s Identity Theft protection services. But what more can you do to protect your data, and prevent your identity from falling into the hands of hackers who might use it to compromise even more victims in the future?
Protecting Your Data From Cyber Attacks
When it comes to your own computer, data storage, networks, and other equipment you have more control and can implement security measures to protect yourself. However, we give our data out to public companies like our Mobile Phone providers, Health Networks, Insurance Providers, Banks, and Social Media Platforms just to name a few. We trust these entities to protect our data, and it’s easy to think that these massive companies have the absolute best security measures and practices in place.
However this would be false, even the largest companies fall victim to cyber intrusions, and major companies are regularly targeted by hacking groups all over the world. That’s why it’s important to have contingency plans for when a company loses your data in a breach.
When a company that hosts your data falls victim to a data breach, it’s important to act fast. Companies are required to alert their customers when they believe their data has been compromised. When you get a notice from a company that your data may have been breached, you should immediately change any passwords you have with that organization, and any passwords that may be close to or related to that password as well.
If you are notified in an email of a potential hack which compromised your data, you should not update your login information or credentials through the email itself. Instead you should login to your profile at that companies website directly to take the necessary security changes.
Using a password manager such as LastPass, or RoboForm for example can help you track, and change passwords for online accounts quickly and easily in case there is a compromise that requires you to act quickly.
Its also a good idea to be on the lookout for phishing emails that could come following a data breach involving your data. If your information was compromised in a data breach, your email could end up being listed on the dark-web which could be used by cybercriminals to send phishing email attempts to. Any suspicious emails that ask you to download attachments, recommend updating payment info, or changing a password should be heavily scrutinized. Check the headers of these messages to verify the email that is sending you the request is legit, and do not click any hyperlinks in the message body unless you first hover your mouse over them to verify, they are going to a legit website.
Unfortunately, these data breaches, and security compromises have become a quasi-fact of life. Something that we all must learn to live with. However, by following a few simple steps, you can ensure that even if your data is potentially exposed in a data breach, you can stay relatively protected.
Natural Networks is a Managed Internet Security provider, and our experts are up to date on all things IT security. If you are interested in learning more, give us a call today!
