By Rachel Grace
Government institutions, companies and citizens alike need to be prepared for inevitable cyberattacks, a cybersecurity expert said Thursday.
“No one wants to acknowledge it, but every organization is going to be breached, and everybody is going to be hacked and compromised at some point,” Adam Levin, author of the book “Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers and Identity Thieves,” said. “You can do everything right, but if you’re on the wrong database at the wrong moment and the wrong person gains access to that database and your social security number is on that database, you’re going to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”
Levin, who is also the chairman and founder of CyberScout and a co-founder of Credit.com, told journalism students at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication that there were over 1,600 data breaches in 2017, and that it only takes one person to compromise millions.
Levin used the 2013 Target breach to explain the vulnerability of company and consumer data.
“They didn’t breach Target directly,” Levin said. “They breached an HVAC that had a contract to run the chilling units at Target. But Target never segmented the data, so they crawled into all the databases, the point of sale system and everything else.”
Levin also described a similar incident that occurred at a major publication in New York City, in which 400 journalists, copywriters and editors became at risk because hackers—posing as an individual in the finance department—phished a human resource employee and gained access to sensitive information about the entire company's W-2s.
“Businesses will say ‘Great news! When we started 80 percent of people fell for it, now only 2 percent of people fell for it,’” Levin said. “But all you need is one person to bring down the company.”
Levin believes that there is nothing individuals can do to fully prevent a cyberattack, but the risk is minimized by utilizing many of the free or low-cost identity protection tools available, such as a password manager or a virtual private network, as well as having a responsible social media presence.
However, Levin said that the issue goes beyond individual vigilance.
“The solution to the hacking problem, the solution to our personal privacy and security problem is cultural,” Levin said. “That means everybody has to work together.”