08/19/2013 By Mark Pribish, Vice President and ID Theft Practice Leader, Merchants Information Solutions Based
on my over 20 years of ID theft and data breach experience, I have concluded
that breach
fatigue has relegated most data breach news events from front page
headlines to the back pages, reflecting a lesser news value and a place of
insignificance. For
example, U.S. prosecutors recently charged six foreign nationals this week with
credit and debit card hacking thefts that cost U.S. and European companies more
than $300 million in payment card losses resulting in the biggest
cyber fraud case filed in U.S. history. In my opinion and because of breach fatigue, most people affected by this data breach event will not understand and/or appreciate the personal/consumer risks and economic impact - because it is just another headline that is soon to be forgotten in a long line of never ending data breach events in the news. Unfortunately, the impact of data breaches has been difficult to understand and visualize – until now. A London based website called Information is Beautiful, which was founded by David McCandless (a data journalist and information designer), helps connect the dots through visual and interactive graphics. McCandless and Information is Beautiful created this visual data breach link which is a new interactive graphic that highlights the biggest data breaches over the last 10 years. This
interactive graphic/link offers a "cool factor" and includes filters
for the type, sensitivity and breach by industry group. I
believe this new form of visual learning on data breach events will help
consumers (along with the organizations affected by a data breach) have a
greater understanding and clarity by visualizing ID theft and data breach
information including facts, data, issues, statistics, and questions. This
visual data breach tool (please see above) can also help consumers and
organizations understand the unique connections, patterns and personal/economic
impact of a specific data breach event by providing the number of victims
involved, as well as a clickable brief synopsis of the event. For
those individuals who want to dig deeper into these data breaches they will
find links to the original news stories such as how usernames and emails -
which are often ignored by consumers/affected individuals when lost or stolen -
can be used by hackers in scams. To conclude, DO NOT let breach fatigue impact your understanding or influence your underestimating the next ID theft and data breach news report that might affect you or a family member. |