IBM X-Force reported a billion data records leaked in 2014

Pierluigi Paganini March 19, 2015

Within the year of 2014, a lot of data was leaked and this leads to grave concerns as to the future of overall online security.

Unfortunately, 2014 was one of the worst years and the reason of that was that a lot if viruses and attempts of violation of online privacy. IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Quarterly company mentions that in 2014 almost a billion e mails, bank accounts, credit card numbers, passwords and any other data that was considered to be confidential one have unfortunately been leaked on the web, due to the fact that many online users have been suffering from lack of overall security on their computers. In fact, the researchers have stated that:

“Based on pure volume, the total number of records breached in 2014 was nearly 25 percent higher than in 2013,” They have also added that: “A prime example was the public disclosure of sensitive photos stored on a cloud service. The security of the cloud service itself was not fundamentally flawed, but users’ weak passwords and easy-to-guess security questions, coupled with lax policies on brute-force authentication, resulted in stolen data,”

even though you may think that the security service that you have on your computer or to any other storage devices is really good, you need to know that nothing stops hackers as they will try to find other ways to harm you or steal your personal data.

data records IBM report 2014

If you think that cryptographic libraries are really good and unbreakable you need to know that were proved to be really vulnerable even though they are used by the most famous platforms such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Researchers discovered that the industries that were mostly violated were computer services, retailers and the government. Of course, the country with the most incidents in comparison to other large countries is none other than the United States of America.

If you make some advanced search on the web, you will find out that the ransomware attacks were the most common ones as they were used in order to have as a target DDoS attacks. Another really famous kind of financial malware is called Citadel and it is used in order to be able to collect any kind of information consider to be important apart from financial clues. With the use of the specific malware the people who use it they have as a target petrochemical sellers, suppliers and password management software. Another thing that the specific study proved is the fact that the devices that were most harmed in were certainly mobile phones. This was done due to the fact of the appearance of so many different kinds of applications and of course due to the fact that the app developers do not update them in order to be absolutely safe for their users.

All of the above are certainly strong clues that should make you think of the way in which you use your saved personal information. So, it is really easy to understand that personal data must remain personal and the only way to achieve that is to be careful and use the perfect security services that will help you to surf the web and feel safe and secure while you are doing it. So, do not waste any more valuable time and find now the security service that suits you the most. This is the best way for you to prevent any serious damage and deterioration of your online experience as a whole.

Enjoy the report .

Written by: Ali Qamar, Founder/Chief Editor at SecurityGladiators.com

Author Bio:
Ali Qamar is an Internet security research enthusiast who enjoys “deep” research to dig out modern discoveries in the security industry. He is the founder and chief editor at Security Gladiators, an ultimate source for cyber security. To be frank and honest, Ali started working online as a freelancer and still shares the knowledge for a living. He is passionate about sharing the knowledge with people, and always try to give only the best. Follow Ali on Twitter @AliQammar57

Edited by Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – data records, FREAK)



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