So your personal information has been stolen....

You wake up, you start your early morning routine. Lift your head off the pillow, check the time and walk to the kitchen for your first cup of coffee. You check your email and bam....an email arrives from a vendor notifying you they had a security breach.

This is how I started my morning today. In the fog of the 5:00 am hour, I read that my personal information has been stolen. I did nothing wrong. I did not click on a link etc. A vendor I use was hacked. Encrypted data was stolen, decrypted and is now in the hands of bad actors. What do they have ? How much personal identifiable information was stolen? Do they have my Social Security Number ? It is very likely. These threats are real. Very real! Cybersecurity is serious business. Ransomware is on the rise. In 2019, Ransomware attacks were up by 42%!

To retrieve their data, this vendor had to pay a ransom. Yet the data was decrypted. This is real and it happens every day.

My information may already be on the dark web. It is certainly for sale. Once it is purchased, the real work begins. Those who troll the Dark Web looking to purchase personal information are experts in social engineering.

They will begin looking at social media, LinkedIn, Facebook , Twitter, Instagram and others to try to identify where I work, personal interest and other items. Then, they could start phishing campaigns to target me personally. If they have a password, they will try it in other areas.

My plan:

1) Change all passwords (note I do not use the same passwords for all sites)

2) Alert LifeLock

3) Bacheler Technologies uses a Dark Web Monitoring service for all of our clients. I will be monitoring it closely.

4) Alert my bank and ask them to watch my account

This threat is a real example of what can happen. This was a large enterprise company. These rouge agents are smart. They are not wearing a hoodie in their grandmothers basement. They are SMB's in Europe, Asia, China and the former Soviet Union. They grab large sums of data through breaches and resell it. It is a highly lucrative business.

Protect yourself and your business. For more information, contact us today and we will have our Security Experts help you understand how your personal and business information is at risk and what we can do to mitigate those risk. You must have a plan, educate your employees and have trusted partner who is receiving Dark Web reports daily!