
Personal identifiable information comprises any data that can be used to identify an individual uniquely. This includes the name, address, social security number, phone number, email address, financial details, and more. Cybercriminals actively seek this information to commit fraudulent activities, leading to devastating consequences for the victims.
British Airways (BA) recently shared that ICO proposed to levy a fine of whopping £183m for a security breach that was first disclosed back in September 2018. The breach had affected approximately 380,000 transactions. The stolen information included names, email addresses and credit card information. BA described the attack as a ‘sophisticated, malicious criminal attack’ and claimed that it moved quickly to limit the damage. Yet, the damage to the company’s reputation as well as the monetary hit (in terms of fine) has been massive.
Several organizations store customers’ personal data for various purposes in the course of their operations. Customer information including usernames and passwords, passport numbers, social security numbers, telephone numbers etc. is routinely stored by organizations.
This information is often like a ticking time bomb that can severely damage an organization’s reputation in case it is stolen or leaked. Studies suggest that in an overwhelming majority of data breaches, it is Personal identifiable information (PII) that is targeted. Unfortunately, for organizations, breaches that involve PII are also the ones that cause maximum damage to organizational reputation.
When it comes to ensuring the security of all PII data in your system, there are a few things that you need to manage.
It is always suggested to use data discovery tools, which can help organizations in minimizing the effort by filtering out the sensitive data and mask, truncate and/delete the data automatically using time stamp based filtering.
Organizations need to be especially vigilant about following optimum storage policies when storing and processing such sensitive data.
Conclusion
Safeguarding PII data is an important responsibility for organizations that collect, store, and use PII data. By implementing a comprehensive set of security controls, organizations can help to protect their PII data and protect their customers from identity theft and other serious consequences.
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