The Equifax Breach

The common data breach disclosures comprise personal data like the credit card numbers, health data, social security numbers and corporate information such as the list of customers, software source code and the processes of manufacturing (Yurieff). If any individual without the authorization views such data then the information that is charged with the protection of such data is said to have suffered a breach. An example of such a data breach is Equifax data breach (Yurieff). The breech is rated as among the worst ever due to the number of people that were affected and the sensitive information that was exposed. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to assess the Equifax breach and come up with ways that could have helped avoid the breach.

Avoiding Breach

Incorporating wiping technology into the devices of the company is one of the best solutions that can be used to avoid a data breach (Moore 47). The wiping technology has the capacity to erase personal information from the personal devices of the employees without taking out their private data. The process can be done tenuously and only object the data linked to the organization. Through this, the company is able to take action fast after the employee leaves since there is no need to wait for them to turn in their gadgets to IT department for the information to be detached. Another important step to prevent data breach I to secure the networks by investing in corporate VPNs that way all the data that is being utilized is encrypted at the source. It should be supplemented with regular software updates to ensure vulnerabilities are eliminated (Moore 47).

Potential Issues

Some of the potential issues that could have encouraged the breach when the company used IPS and firewall is that IPS is considered to be a passive monitoring system since the key purpose of the system is to simply caution the user of apprehensive action that is taking place but lacks the capacity to prevent them (Moore 48). Therefore, this gives the malicious individuals more time to exploit the system since they are not prevented. Similarly, there are possible firewall leakages that can be brought about by third-party VPN solutions. He internal employees may avoid connecting to the internet through the corporate sanctioned VPN since they do not want their activities to be logged. The third party will be willing to assist such employees to facilitate the breach for a fee (Moore 48).

Works Cited

Moore, Tyler. “On the harms arising from the Equifax data breach of 2017.” International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection 19 (2017): 47-48.

Yurieff, Kaya. ”Equifax Data Breach: What you need to Know.” 10 Sept. 2017, money.cnn.com/2017/09/08/technology/equifax-hack-qa/index.html. Accessed 6 Feb. 2018.