Haim Roth

As Halloween approaches, it’s the perfect time to dive into some of the scariest data breaches of 2024. Just like monsters hiding in haunted houses, cyber threats quietly move through the digital world, waiting to target vulnerable organizations.

The financial impact of cyberattacks is immense. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates global cybercrime will reach $9.5 trillion in 2024 and $10.5 trillion by 2025. Ransomware, the top threat, is projected to cause damages from $42 billion in 2024 to $265 billion by 2031.

If those numbers didn’t scare you, the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report highlights that out of 30,458 cyber incidents, 10,626 were confirmed data breaches, with one-third involving ransomware or extortion. Ransomware has been the top threat in 92% of industries and, along with phishing, malware, and DDoS attacks, has caused nearly two-thirds of data breaches in the past three years.

Let's explore some of the most spine-tingling breaches of 2024 and uncover how they could have been avoided.

Major Data Breaches That Shook the Digital World

The Dark Secrets of National Public Data

The latest National Public Data breach is staggering, just this summer, a hacking group claims to have stolen 2.7 billion personal records, potentially affecting nearly everyone in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This includes American Social Security numbers. They published portions of the stolen data on the dark web, and while experts are still analyzing how accurate and complete the information is (there are only about half a billion people between the US, Canada, and UK), it's likely that most, if not all, social security numbers have been compromised.

The Haunting of AT&T

‍AT&T faced a nightmare when hackers breached their systems, exposing the personal data of 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former customers. The stolen data, including sensitive information like Social Security numbers and account details, surfaced on the dark web in March 2024.

Change Healthcare Faces a Chilling Breach

In February 2024, Change Healthcare fell victim to a massive ransomware attack that exposed the personal information of millions of individuals, with 145 million records exposed. This breach, one of the largest in healthcare history, compromised names, addresses, Social Security numbers, medical records, and other sensitive data. The incident had far-reaching effects on patients, healthcare providers, and insurance companies, prompting many in the healthcare industry to reevaluate their security strategies.

The Nightmare of Ticketmaster

‍Ticketmaster faced a horror of epic proportions when hackers breached their systems, compromising 560 million customer records. This data breach included sensitive details such as payment information, order history, and personal identifiers. The leaked data, offered for sale online, put millions at risk and led to potential federal legal action against their parent company, Live Nation.

How Can Organizations Prevent Data Breaches: Proactive Steps

To mitigate the risk of data breaches, organizations should take proactive steps. 

• Regularly monitor accounts and credit reports for unusual activity.
• Strengthen access controls by minimizing over-privileged users.
• Review permissions and encrypt critical data to protect it both at rest and in transit. 
• Invest in real-time threat detection tools and conduct regular security audits to help identify vulnerabilities and respond quickly to emerging threats.
• Implement Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) to detect shadow data and ensure proper data hygiene (i.e. encryption, masking, activity logging, etc.) 

These measures, including multi-factor authentication and routine compliance audits, can significantly reduce the risk of breaches and better protect sensitive information.

Best Practices to Secure Your Data 

Enough of the scary news, how do we avoid these nightmares?

Organizations can defend themselves starting with Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) tools. By finding and eliminating shadow data, identifying over-privileged users, and monitoring data movement, companies can significantly reduce their risk of facing these digital threats.

Looking at these major breaches, it's clear the stakes have never been higher. Each incident highlights the vulnerabilities we face and the urgent need for strong protection strategies. Learning from these missteps underscores the importance of prioritizing data security.

As technology continues to evolve and regulations grow stricter, it’s vital for businesses to adopt a proactive approach to safeguarding their data. Implementing proper data security measures can play a critical role in protecting sensitive information and minimizing the risk of future breaches.

‍Sentra: The Data Security Platform for the AI era

‍Sentra enables security teams to gain full visibility and control of data, as well as protect against sensitive data breaches across the entire public cloud stack. By discovering where all the sensitive data is, how it's secured, and where it's going, Sentra reduces the 'data attack surface', the sum of all places where sensitive or critical data is stored or traveling to.Sentra’s cloud-native design combines powerful Data Discovery and Classification, DSPM, DAG, and DDR capabilities into a complete Data Security Platform (DSP). With this, Sentra customers achieve enterprise-scale data protection and answer the important questions about their data. Sentra DSP provides a crucial layer of protection distinct from other infrastructure-dependent layers. It allows organizations to scale data protection across multi-clouds to meet enterprise demands and keep pace with ever-evolving business needs. And it does so very efficiently - without creating undue burdens on the personnel who must manage it.