Question

1. Facebook breach resulted in the exposure of 87 million users and led to election meddling
2. Facebook storing users’ passwords in unencrypted format
3. 500 million guests’ data was exposed by Marriott hotels

Using the above examples, and others answer the following questions:

1. What factors within these organizations led to the loss/exposure of private information? Think about technical, people, and process factors
2. What are the consequences of the breaches on business and people?
3. What is the effect of big data and analytics on breaches and their consequences?
4. How can companies protect the privacy of their customers?

Answer 1

Personal Information, This word is heard more often in websites and the policies of the websites. It has a great impact on many things and in fact, it could alter or change the process. In the same category falls the personal sensitive information. Every product developer has a set of guidelines on using this data and limitations of the processing and storing of this data. We need to ensure that our data is protected and not in the hands of the wrong people. We need to be careful about providing our sensitive data.

A. Usually, Organizations collect this type of data for creating an account which will be helpful for quick reference and administration purposes. This data is collected in person or using an electronic medium. There are many ways by which this may get into the hands of ill-natured people. This is mainly because of the various issues. Any organization that collects the data using online surveys, weblinks, emails, and other forms has to ensure that this data is transferred through secure enabled platform which can be 128 or 256 SSL encryption media. We also have many options such as a collection of these data from the manual forms. Organizations should restrict access to this data and control access for viewing and using this. Storing this data on the cloud with less security or has access to downstream applications from this database will make the hacker's task easier to get the data into their hands. All the people who had access to these databases should be reviewed and it should have control over what they can view and what they can process.

B. When there is a data breach in any organization, It brings the organization to risk. Many important documents in regards to the business are revealed to the outer world and especially the customer databases when available in the market it makes competitors easy to overcome the sales targets and this customer base can be acquired easily by targetting with relevant adverts.

This leads to the downfall of the application and also customers lose trust in the organization. This will also lead o the shutdown of that application.

C. Big data and analysis have great potential when comes to a data breach. If this data falls into the hands of the competitor or any other firm in the market. Proper analysis can be done and decisions can be taken to motivate the customers and move the customer base. Marketing a product becomes easier with a selective target of marketing adverts. This also leads to various issues in the market and has potential issues for customers.

D. Companies can protect the data of customers by taking precautions in handling this data and also storing them in a safe and secure environment. Access must be given to the employees who are authorized to view the data and processing them. Masking sensitive information and providing the option to enter partial details from the customer end also helps in reducing the risk of being stolen. All the security patches must be updated on the software base and downstream systems that has access to this data should be reviewed frequently. This helps us to get the things done in a better way.