Here are five of the most famous data breaches.
1.) Wonga Loans – 245,000 People Affected.
What happened?
Wonga, the payday loan organisation, got hit by a huge data breach in 2017 that compromised the bank details of over 245,000 customers.
How?
While a single cause is still to be confirmed, the reports did point to a lack of internal security.
2.) Morrison’s supermarket – 100,000 People Affected
What happened?
Supermarket chain Morrison’s became a victim of an internal attack that lead to over 100,000 employee’s personal details being leaked.
How?
Company employee Andrew Skelton purposely leaked the payroll data of Morrison’s entire workforce, including salaries and bank account details. Thousands of staff were awarded compensation payouts. The attack cost the supermarket chain £2,000,000 and Skelton is serving eight years for the crime.
This severe breach happened because Morrison’s allowed employees too much access to sensitive information. Only the right eyes should see sensitive company documents.
3.) Brighton and Sussex University Hospital – Unclear (but thousands) of People Affected
What happened?
The Brighton and Sussex University Hospital was fined £325,000 over the theft of thousands of patient’s data from 252 hard drives. The highly sensitive information, which included medical results, were allegedly put on sale on ebay.
How?
A thief got access to the sensitive data by stealing hard drives that were supposed to have been destroyed.
4.) LinkedIn – 165,000,000 People Affected
What happened?
Linkedin, experienced a breach that compromised the personal information of over 165 million user accounts. The data has been reported as up for sale on the dark web marketplace.
How?
The data breach – which cost LinkedIn over £3,000,000 to clean up – was reported to be the result of weak user passwords and of course a failure in LinkedIn’s Security.
5.) Dixons Carphone – 1.2 Million (Rising to 10 Million) People Affected
To start, Dixons Carphone estimated 1.2 million customer records were compromised. However, a few months later, Dixons Carphone confirmed that the breach affected 10 million.
What happened?
Hackers accessed customer records that included sensitive information such as email addresses, names, and postal addresses. It took Dixons Carphone a year to confirm the total number of compromised accounts.
How?
Hackers unearthed details of a number of payment cards, and because of this the personal records of the card holders were compromised. The biggest issue with Dixon Carphone’s enormous data breach was the delay in recognising the extent of the damage. The fault was poor system visibility and even poorer threat detection.
