Welcome to the February 2019 issue of the Computing Security Newsletter.

It is disturbing to hear that cyber criminals have placed 617million hacked accounts for sale on the dark web, stemming from 16 separate data breaches. The databases are listed on themarketplace Dream Market, alongside drugs, weapons and other illicit items.Depending on the breach, stolen data may include email addresses, passwords, location and other personal details.

This is a world where anything goes and it is almost impenetrable to those ‘on the outside’. Once data has been stolen and passed on into the labyrinthine maw of the dark web, that data is sold on, ending up in the hands of those who mean to make serious money out of the compromised data.

For those whose data has been hacked, it’s way too late for any regrets. Damage limitation is about as good as it gets after that. So, what is the answer? Don’t be a victim in the first place!

As Jason Hart, CTO of Data Protection, Gemalto,argues, adequately protecting a business’s data will reduce its value for cybercriminals and ultimately disrupt the marketplaces that populate the dark web.“For any organisation doubting the value of their data, they only need to look at the dark web to see that, in the event of a data breach, their data is being sold for thousands of pounds, enabling everything from fraud to further cyberattacks.

“However, while data breaches will happen, there are steps businesses can take to stop their, or their customers’, data from appearing on the dark web. By controlling access to the data itself through multi-factor authentication, encrypting the data and securing the encryption keys, hackers won’t be able to sell it and will fast lose interest, reducing the amount of data stolen in the first place. Only through encryption can you remove the ROI [Return on Investment] for hackers to want to steal the data in the first place.”

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Brian Wall, Editor
Computing Security

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