News broke this week that Ashley Madison, a website for married people who wish to cheat on their spouses was compromised, resulting in the theft of a vast trove of confidential data. The website whose motto states “Life is short. Have an affair” may have been targeted by an individual who had inside access to the company’s entire IT systems.
According to sources thousands of Irish individuals are signed up to the site. Not only have users given their credit card information they have also shared their sexual fantasies with the website. It’s safe to say that there are going to be some very worried individuals around the world this week.
While the millions of users worldwide gave their personal information in confidence there are some useful tips for the end user and businesses to remember when using the internet.
Dermot Williams, Managing Director of Threatscape, shares his advice:
“You can never really know the level of diligence and sophistication an online site is applying to the security of your data or the risk that an insider there is snooping on users. What you can do is try to choose only large reputable websites and don’t put anything online you don’t want to find splashed across the front page of a newspaper.
Dermot also advises end users not to use the same password across multiple sites so that you can contain the risks if one site does gets breached. Meanwhile those operating web sites or any IT systems containing confidential data should remember that the threat from insiders – whether they are malicious or merely careless – continues to be a key risk factor in securing business critical data.”
