Cyber security skills shortage can be addressed

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The shortage of cyber security skills can be addressed according to the information security professional training and certification body (ISC)2

The shortage of cyber security skills can be addressed according to the information security professional training and certification body (ISC)2

There could be up to 1.8 million information security related roles unfilled worldwide by 2022, according to the latest Global information security workforce study from (ISC)2, but the organisation believes there are ways to address this potential shortfall.

“It makes no sense that we have employment issues for veterans and other communities on the one hand, and information security jobs being unfilled on the other,” according to John McCumber, director of cyber security advocacy at (ISC)2.

In this newly created role of advocacy for the information security profession, McCumber is engaging with the governments on issues such as workforce development and supporting information security professionals in the work they do.

McCumber, who has been working in information security in military, national security and civilian roles for the past 30 years, argues that in the light of the fact that there are jobs for people coming out of trade schools, there is no reason that aspects of cyber security cannot be turned into trades.

“By treating cyber security as a trade, it will enable school leavers to get some basic skills without having to do a four-year course and to provide valuable services in well-paid jobs in the cyber security field,” he said. “There are a lot of productive jobs in the cyber security field that do not need a four-year degree.”

The training is aimed at enabling veterans to join the (ISC)2 associate membership programme, which provides them with the experience required to qualify for various information security certifications.

“By enabling veterans to get certified as information systems security professionals, systems security practitioners and cloud security professionals, we are able to connect them with well-paying jobs,” said McCumber.

McCumber predicts that cyber security jobs will also begin changing in future as new technologies enable organisations to automate a lot of their cyber attack responses.

“Things like penetration testing are also likely to be automated with advances in so-called artificial intelligence, so (ISC)2 is working with information security professionals to position themselves for the new world of work and show organisations how they can help them understand their cyber risk and provide an objective way of managing that risk,” he said.

“As a result, that projected 1.8 million cyber security skills gap will not look as insurmountable in two to three years’ time,” he said.

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Ransomware up nearly 2,000% in two years as cyber mafia hit business

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Cyber attacks on businesses in 2017 grew in frequency, sophistication and malice – a report on the new age of organised cyber crime finds.

Cyber attacks on businesses in 2017 grew in frequency, sophistication and malice - a report on the new age of organised cyber crime finds.

The new generation of cyber criminals increasingly resembles traditional mafia organisations, requiring a new approach to dealing with it, according to a report by security firm Malwarebytes.

Cyber criminals have the same professional organisation as mafia gangs of the 1930s, but they also share a willingness to intimidate and paralyse victims, the report shows.

Malwarebytes’ analysis also shows that, in spite of acknowledging the severe reputational and financial risks of cyber crime, many business leaders greatly underestimate their vulnerability to such attacks.

The report calls for businesses and consumers to fight back by acting as “vigilantes” through greater collective awareness, knowledge sharing and proactive defenses. This includes a shift from shaming businesses that have been hacked to engaging with them and working together to fix the problem.

Businesses must also heighten their awareness of cyber crime, and take a realistic view towards the likelihood of attack.

The vast impacts of these attacks, the report said, mean that cyber crime must be elevated from a tech issue to a business-critical consideration.

Malwarebytes’ data demonstrates the urgent need for such a shift in approach by highlighting the capacity of these fast-maturing gangs to inflict greater damage on businesses.

The new cyber mafia, the report said, is accelerating the volume of attacks, with the average monthly volume of attacks in 2017, up 23% compared with 2016. In the UK, the report said 28% of businesses had experienced a “serious” cyber attack in the past 12 months.

Ransomware attacks detected by Malwarebytes show that the number of attacks in 2017 from January to October was 62% greater than the total for 2016.

In addition, detections are up 1,989% since 2015, reaching hundreds of thousands of detections in September 2017, compared with fewer than 16,000 in September 2015. In 2017, ransomware detections rose from 90,351 in January to 333,871 in October.

“The new mafia, identified by our report, is characterised by the emergence of four distinct groups of cyber criminals: traditional gangs, state-sponsored attackers, ideological hackers and hackers-for-hire,” said Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of Malwarebytes.

Malwarebytes argues that the growth of cyber crime and a lack of clarity over how best to police it is damaging victim confidence, with those affected by cyber crime often too embarrassed to speak out.

This is true for consumers and businesses alike, the report said, and can have dangerous ramifications as firms bury their heads in the sand instead of working to reduce future incidents.

The report suggests that the answer lies in engaging and educating the C-suite so that CEOs are as likely as IT departments to recognise the signs of an attack and be able to respond appropriately.

“CEOs will soon have little choice but to elevate cyber crime from a technology issue to a business-critical consideration,” he said.

“Rather than sit back and minimise the blow from cyber crime, individuals and businesses must take the same actions that previous generations of vigilantes once did against the fearsome syndicates of their day: fight back,” the report said.

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Small businesses cyber success is balance of user experience, privacy and security

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Small businesses need to balance user experience, privacy and security to achieve overall cyber success.

Small businesses need to balance user experience, privacy and security to achieve overall cyber success.

A change in approach will help businesses achieve the right balance between user experience, privacy and security more easily, says Martin Kuppinger, principal analyst at KuppingerCole.

“Most businesses are making the fundamental mistake of thinking inside-out, but by thinking outside-in, they will automatically put the consumer first,” he told Consumer Identity World Europe 2017 in Paris.

This means instead of thinking about what suits the business, the business looks at what will best suit its customers, what works best for customers and taking customer preferences into account.

“Most businesses need to switch from the approach where they are telling consumers what they want them to do, to making it clear they are willing to do things the way the consumer wants,” said Kuppinger.

“We do what you want, needs to be the message, because this is the best way to ensure that consumers will want to do the most with them,” he said.

In the light of the European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Kuppinger said it is now even more important to get the balance right.

From a consumer perspective, this means ensuring that services and interactions with suppliers need to be simple, and as frictionless and transparent as possible.

“Aside from GDPR requirements, consumers are generally more willing to share data if the reward is clear and they know that organisations use their data only for the purpose it was originally collected for,” said Kuppinger.

From a business perspective, it is therefore important to ensure that there is a standard approach to customer data throughout the organisation and that personal data is collected only when necessary.

“They need to be clear about what they are collecting, what purpose they are collecting the data, and they must provide processes for consumers to withdraw consent if they wish.”

However, done correctly, collecting and managing consumer information can improve the customer experience, said John Tolbert, lead analyst at KuppingerCole.

“Consumer identity management can also enable new business models, such as freemium models where basic services are provided free with the option of upgrading to paid services or shared revenue models,” he said.

Tolbert also emphasised the importance of making it clear to consumers what they will get in exchange for agreeing to allow businesses to collect and user their data.

“Again, getting the balance right is important because the more data you collect the more friction you add, so collect just enough information to be useful to keep friction to a minimum,” he said.

Tolbert said it is always important to be explicit about information is being collected, collect only what is necessary, and reduce friction by avoiding pop-ups that continually ask for more data.

“Fine-tune how you interrupt visitors to your site, be conservative in the information you collect and always ensure you have good consent management processes to collect and store consent,” he said.

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ICO wants jail terms for personal data misuse

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The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says it wants prison sentences for anyone misusing personal data unlawfully.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says it wants prison sentences for anyone misusing personal data unlawfully.

A nursing auxiliary has been fined for accessing a patient’s medical records without a valid legal reason, prompting the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to reiterate calls for prison sentences.

Cwmbran Magistrates’ Court fined 61-year-old Marian Waddell of Newport £232 after she admitted accessing a patient’s records at Newport’s Royal Gwent Hospital.

She was also ordered to pay £150 costs as well as a £30 victim surcharge for breaching section 55 of the 1988 Data Protection Act.

Waddell accessed the records of a patient, who was known to her, on six occasions between July 2015 and February 2016 without a valid business reason and without the knowledge of the data controller, the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board.

David Teague, the ICO’s regional manager for Wales, said it is disappointing that people continue to get into serious trouble over behaviour that is easily avoidable.

“Staff training, and the publicity around previous cases of this nature, means that they really should know better,” he said, adding that anyone whose work allows them to access sensitive personal data must realise that this information is out of bounds unless they have a valid and legal reason for looking at it.

Mike Shaw, enforcement group manager and head of the ICO’s criminal investigations team, warned that anyone accessing personal data without a valid reason or without their employer’s knowledge is guilty of a criminal offence and will be prosecuted by the ICO.

“If found guilty, you will face a fine and possibly have to pay prosecution costs,” he wrote in a blog post. “The court case will likely be covered by local media and the details played out over the internet. Not only could you lose your job, but your future employment prospects could be irreparably damaged too.”

“Of course, this issue is not unique to the NHS,” he said. “In 2017, we have also prosecuted cases involving employees in local government, charities and the private sector, the latter cases often involving an element of financial gain.”

Currently, section 55 offences can be punished only with a fine, and the nine convictions this year attracted fines and costs totalling more than £8,000.

“But in the future, we would like to see custodial sentences introduced as a sentencing option for the courts in the most serious cases,” said Shaw.

The ICO has long campaigned for custodial sentences for people convicted of accessing personal data unlawfully, especially for financial gain, under former information commissioners Richard Thomas and Christopher Graham, and now under current information commissioner Elizabeth Denham.

Most small businesses (SMEs) not prepared for GDPR

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There is still much work to be done before small businesses (SMEs) are fully prepared for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

There is still much work to be done before small businesses (SMEs) are fully prepared for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

With the GDPR compliance deadline just over six months away, the UK’s small business community remains unsure about a number of related issues.

Small businesses are struggling to come to grips with what “personal data” really means, their customers’ new and extended rights, and whether the permissions they currently have to contact customers will meet the requirements of GDPR.

This is one of the key findings of the Close Brothers Business Barometer, a quarterly survey that questions more than 900 SME owners and senior management across a range of sectors and regions in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

“GDPR is intended to strengthen and unify data protection for individuals within the EU, but will also affect the UK regardless of Brexit,” said Neil Davies, CEO of Close Brothers Asset Finance.

“It will ensure that all personal data has to be managed in a safe and secure way, has to be gathered lawfully, is only used for the purposes for which it was collected, and must be accurate and up to date.

Poor understanding of GDPR compliance requirements

“The figures from the barometer tell us that uncertainty persists on a number of key compliance issues, and SMEs are concerned about the implications for their business.”

Less than a third (31%) of SMEs answered “yes” to the question, “Are you clear what ‘personal data’ means in a business context?”, with 50% responding “sort of” and the remaining 19% saying “no”.

“On a positive note, 73% of firm owners categorically stated that they do not share customers’ personal data with third parties,” said Neil. “There are, however, companies openly admitting to sharing customers’ details (8%), and a further 18% conceding they were unsure of whether they do or not.”

Less than half (48%) of respondents said they understand the new and extended rights that customers have when it comes to collecting and utilising their personal information.

Despite the lack of clear understanding of the extended rights customers will have, 58% of SMEs are confident that the permissions they currently have to contact customers will meet the requirements of GDPR.

“This still leaves more than 40% of firms which are unconvinced about their readiness ahead of 25 May 2018,” said Neil. “How it works is that companies must get prior consent from data subjects – opt in – and record that consent. What’s more, the consent must relate specifically to the purposes of why a company needs that data – companies cannot get consent for one purpose and then use the gathered personal data for another.

“On top of this, consumers must be able to revoke their consent as easily as it was originally given, because many consumers complain that it is easy to opt in to data gathering, but difficult to unsubscribe or opt out.”

Of those polled, 44% said they had a process in place to ensure their firm was collecting data in the correct manner, against 35% who were “unsure” and 21% admitting they had no existing process in place

“Businesses have to be seen to be compliant, and this includes ensuring these sorts of processes are in place to ensure customers are fairly treated,” said Neil.

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SMEs more vulnerable than ever to cyber security attacks

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The overwhelming majority of cyber security attacks on small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) result from poor password management, a study of 1,000 UK and US SMEs by the Ponemon Institute shows.

The overwhelming majority of cyber security attacks on small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) result from poor password management, a study of 1,000 UK and US SMEs by the Ponemon Institute shows.

Despite this fact, SMEs are doing very little to boost visibility into the password practices of their employees, according to the study sponsored by password management firm Keeper Security.

The study report said employee negligence is the top root cause of successful data breaches.

“Survey respondents believe cyber attacks are becoming more targeted, more severe in terms of consequences, and more sophisticated,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute. “So you would think things would be getting better in terms of protecting themselves, but they are really trending to worsening.”

According to the survey – 61% of respondents reported a cyber security attack, up from 55% a year ago – while 54% reported a data breach, up from 50% a year earlier.

Ransomware attacks were reported by 52% of respondents, with 53% of those reporting they were hit by more than one ransomware attack.

The total costs associated with successful cyber attacks on SMEs now total well in excess of £1m, meaning a single attack could bring an SME to its knees financially.

Not only has the cost of data breaches risen to an average of just over £1.2m including all attack mitigation and business disruption costs from £717,909 a year ago, but the average number of records stolen has soared from just over 5,000 per attack last year to 9,350 this year – an 87% increase.

While 54% of respondents say the root cause of the attacks are negligent (not malicious) employees, a full third of the companies surveyed could not even determine the root cause.

An ongoing lack of attention to password usage underlies much of the cyber security woes at SMEs, the study said, referring to the latest Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, which noted that 81% of all cyber attacks result from poor password management practices.

More information about SME cyber security risks

  • SMEs are failing to address cyber threats despite the risks.
  • SMEs typically face the same threats as bigger organisations, but lack the same level of expertise and other security resources.
  • The latest Ponemon research shows that 59% of respondents said they have no visibility into their employees’ password practices, which is unchanged from a year ago.

Among the bad practices cited are using the same passwords for access to multiple accounts and servers; sharing passwords in highly insecure ways; and failing to use strong passwords, settling instead for 123456 or other very easily compromised passwords.

Less than half – 43% – of SMEs surveyed have any sort of password policy in place. And of those that do have such a policy in place, 68% (up from 65% last year) said they either do not strictly enforce the policies or are unsure if they are enforced.

According to the study, SMEs need to implement greater data protection beyond the “traditional” protection tools, with two-thirds of respondents reporting cyber attacks that evaded the company’s intrusion protection defenses, up from 57% a year ago, and 81% reporting such attacks evading traditional antivirus defences, up from 76% last year.

The Ponemon study shows that the top barriers to adopting better cyber defences are a lack of trained security staff (73%) and inadequate budget (56%).

However, the report said given the enormous costs associated with a data breach, failing to protect against today’s dynamic threat environment could prove disastrous, and the costs associated with doing so may not be as high as imagined.

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Business needs help to act on cyber security advice

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Businesses need help to act on all the information they receive about cyber security according to the London Digital Security Centre,

Businesses need help to act on all the information they receive about cyber security according to the London Digital Security Centre,

Small businesses need help in tackling cyber crime and embracing cyber security, not just information, according to John Unsworth, chief executive of the London Digital Security Centre (DSC).

“Information is good, but action is better,” he told the Whitehall Media Enterprise Cyber Security Conference in London. “There is a lot of information, but businesses want help in implementing it.”

The London DSC was set up as a not-for-profit organisation in 2015 by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime to help the city’s roughly one million small businesses protect themselves from cyber crime.

The centre is run as a joint venture between the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police to protect small businesses that are at the heart of the economy.

“The point of the centre is to help businesses act on the wealth of information that is out there to take control of their cyber security by implementing controls that make a difference,” said Unsworth.

“Part of our role is also to cut through the noise and show businesses that the things that will make a difference for the majority of small businesses cost little or nothing to implement.”

Many of the things small businesses can do to improve their cyber security only have a cost in time and effort, said Unsworth. “Cyber security is not always about buying a technical solution,” he added.

Investments in security technologies depend on the size of the business, the business operating model and what the business is trying to achieve, he said. “So for businesses that handle sensitive information, there is a cost because they need to ensure that data is protected and demonstrate that they have a good security posture.”

The role of the London DSC is to identify and prioritise business needs in terms of cyber security controls, said Unsworth.

 

Underlining the need to support small business in the face of cyber crime, Unsworth said that although more than 50% of crime reported to police is cyber enabled in some way, only 0.1% of policing resources across England and Wales are dedicated to the prevention and detection of cyber crime.

This is symptomatic of the fact that not everyone recognises that cyber crime is a big problem and it tends to be under-reported, he said. “What we need to start doing is creating a little bit of evidence noise about what the issues are, so we can get the right type of response to all of this.”

 

“What we have got to change and shift is this behaviour, so what we have done is to set about getting face-to-face with small businesses and talk to them one-to-one rather than relying on social media campaigns to get businesses to take cyber security more seriously.”

“When you start speaking to them in simple language, they soon realise that all cyber security is really about is understanding what you are using, what you are connected to, and if you have got the right controls in place,” said Unsworth.

Small businesses in denial over cyber security threats

According to Unsworth, many small businesses are in denial when it comes to cyber crime – they tend to think it will not happen to them because they don’t understand why they might be targeted.

“We want to help businesses avoid the regret of not doing something that could have prevented a cyber attack by helping them to embrace cyber security and putting in appropriate controls,” he said.

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National Cyber Securty Centre’s 2017 Annual Review

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The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) celebrates its first anniversary of operations this week.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) celebrates its first anniversary of operations this week.

The Annual Review highlights the work it has done to make the UK the safest place to live and work online.

While there is still much work to be done, the NCSC’s first annual report says it has prevented thousands of cyber attacks since its inception.

The NCSC received 1,131 incident reports, with 590 classed as “significant”, according to the agency’s first annual review.

Those “significant attacks” ranged from attacks on key national institutions such as the National Health Service (NHS) and the UK and Scottish Parliaments, through to attacks on large and small businesses and other organisations, said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the NCSC.

But, he said, so much of the NCSC’s work aims to make successful attacks less likely, and to that end the NCSC has so far produced more than 200,000 protective items for military communications; supported the Cabinet Office in developing more secure communications for key government organisations; and supported the Home Office in ensuring the security of new mobile communications for emergency services.

The NCSC, part of GCHQ, brought together elements of its parent organisation with previously separate parts of government and intelligence to create a single, one stop shop for UK cyber security, with the aim of making the UK the safest place to live and work online.

A crucial part of the NCSC’s role is to help everyone in the UK operate more securely online.

“Through a pioneering partnership with the private sector, tens of millions of suspicious communications in the UK are being blocked every month,” he said.

Martin highlighted the fact that the NCSC’s Active Cyber Defence programme has developed capabilities, which have seen the average lifetime for a phishing site hosted in the UK reduce from 27 hours to less than an hour.

He added that the NCSC’s information-sharing platform with industry, the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP), grew 43% over the year.

However, he said the NSCS still has much to do in the years ahead to “counter this strategic threat to our values, prosperity and way of life” in collaboration with GCHQ and the UK intelligence community, law enforcement, wider government, industry and the rest of the world.

Martin said cyber security is crucial to the UK’s national security and prosperity. “We’re incredibly proud of what we have achieved in our first year, bringing together some of the best cyber security brains in the country in a single place.

“But the threat remains very real and growing – further attacks will happen and there is much more for us to do. We look forward to working with our partners at home and abroad in the year ahead in pursuit of that vital goal,” he said.

According to the review, tens of millions of cyber attacks are being blocked every week by industry partners implementing NCSC’s Active Cyber Defence programme

The programme currently includes the NCSC’s protected domain name server (DNS) service built by Nominet to block bad stuff from being accessed from government systems; the use and support of the domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance protocol (Dmarc) to block bad emails pretending to be from government; and a phishing and malware countermeasures service to protect the UK, including government brands.

Similarly, while the number of IP-addresses associated with phishing around the world is up 47% this year, the UK share of those has gone down from 5.1% to 3.3%.

 

Million new cyber phishing sites created each month

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Cyber phishing attacks continue to increase in volume and sophistication, according to researchers at security firm Webroot.

Cyber phishing attacks continue to increase in volume and sophistication, according to researchers at security firm Webroot.
In May 2017, the number of new phishing sites reached a new high of 2.3 million in that month alone, according to the September 2017 Webroot Quarterly Threat Trends Report.

Data collected by Webroot shows that the latest phishing sites use realistic web pages that are almost impossible to find using web crawlers to trick victims into providing personal and business information.

Once this data is harvested, attackers are able to steal digital identities to access business IT systems to steal data and compromise business email accounts to carry out CEO fraud attacks.

The Webroot data also shows phishing attacks have grown at an unprecedented rate in 2017, with it continuing to be one of the most common, widespread security threats faced by both businesses and consumers.

According to the report, phishing is the top cause of cyber breaches in the world, with an average of more than 46,000 new phishing sites created each day.

The sheer volume of new sites makes phishing attacks difficult to defend against for businesses, the report said.

Even if the block lists are updated hourly, they are generally 3–5 days out of date by the time they are made available, the report said, by which time the sites in question may have already victimised users and disappeared.

Attacks are increasingly sophisticated and more adept at fooling the victim, the researchers found. The note that while in the past, phishing attacks randomly targeted as many people as possible,today’s phishing is more sophisticated.

Cyber attackers now typically research their targets and use social engineering to uncover relevant personal information for individualised attacks. Phishing sites also hide behind benign domains and obfuscate true uniform resource locators (URLs), fooling users with realistic impersonated websites.

The researchers found that zero-day websites used for phishing may number in the millions each month, yet they tend to impersonate a small number of companies. Webroot categorised URLs by the type of website being impersonated and found that financial institutions and technology companies are the most phished categories.

According to an FBI public service announcement issued on 4 May 2017, phishing scams cost US business $500m a year, while Verizon found phishing to be involved in 90% of breaches and security incidents and a report by ESG showed that 63% of surveyed security and network influencers and decision makers have suffered from phishing attacks in the past two years.

In the ESG report, 46% of respondents said malware attacks have become more targeted over the past two years, and 45% said there is a greater volume of malware than in the past two years.

“Today’s phishing attacks are incredibly sophisticated, with hackers obfuscating malicious URLs, using psychology and information gleaned from reconnaissance to get you to click on a link,” said Hal Lonas, chief technology officer at Webroot.

“Even savvy cyber security professionals can fall prey. Instead of blaming the victim, the industry needs to embrace a combination of user education and organisational protection with real-time intelligence to stay ahead of the ever-changing threat landscape,” he said.

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Millions of customer records hacked in major Equifax security breach

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A major security breach at Equifax has taken place over a two month period

A major security breach at Equifax has taken place over a two month period

It is thought to have affected 143 million customers in the US, as well as an undisclosed number of Britons and Canadians.

The perpetrators exploited a vulnerability in a US website application to gain access to confidential information – including names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s license numbers, as well as around 209,000 credit card numbers – over a two month period from May 2017.

It also found unauthorised access to “limited personal information” of a number of British and Canadian customers, and will work with regulators in both countries to determine an appropriate path forward. It added that it had found “no evidence” of any unauthorised activity on its core consumer or enterprise credit reporting databases.

Since halting the intrusion on 29 July, Equifax has been working closely with law enforcement and brought in a cyber security partner to conduct a thorough forensic review of its systems. This investigation is mostly complete, but more detailed information is expected to emerge in the coming days and weeks.

Equifax has confirmed that the massive data breach was result of missed patch and appear to have failed to roll out a patch that might have stopped the massive breach of its systems.

From a hacker perspective, many organisations are still leaving the front door open and the windows unlocked. Failure to protect and handle data correctly can also result in punitive actions for companies participating in the digital economy.

In a brief update statement, Equifax said it had been “intensely investigating” the scope of the intrusion with the help of an undisclosed cyber security firm – thought to be Mandiant – to find out exactly what information was accessed and whom it belongs to.

“We know that criminals exploited a US website application vulnerability. The vulnerability was Apache Struts CVE-2017-5638,” it said. “We continue to work with law enforcement as part of our criminal investigation, and have shared indicators of compromise with law enforcement.”

Apache Struts is an open-source model-view controller (MVC) framework for building Java web applications, and is well used across the financial services sector. The vulnerability causes it to mishandle file upload, which enables malicious actors to execute arbitrary commands via a command string in a crafted content-type HTTP header.

This was first highlighted in March 2017, and patches were subsequently released for it.

However, the Equifax breach began in May, which would seem to suggest the organisation did not bother to apply the updates to its systems.

Since news of the breach emerged, it has also emerged that the incident may have resulted in many more Britons than at first suspected having their data compromised – around 44 million by some estimates.

This is because even if people do not directly purchase Equifax’s consumer services themselves, some of their sensitive personal data is almost certainly held by enterprises, which use its corporate services to check credit scores for loans, for example.

Experts criticised the Equifax breach response as insufficient given the size and scope of the data loss, and said the company was likely not prepared for such an incident.

While doing preparation work for GDPR, organisations should look at the Equifax breach and understand they would have to notify customers of a problem much sooner.

“We will be advising Equifax to alert affected UK customers at the earliest opportunity. In cyber attack cases that cross borders the ICO is committed to working with relevant overseas authorities on behalf of UK citizens.”

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