Drake International the latest victim of hacking, extortion scheme against companies
Christine Dobby | Jan 9, 2013 11:56 AM ET |(source: Financial Post, written by Christine Dobby (excerpt taken), http://business.financialpost.com/2013/01/09/drake-international-confirms-database-with-user-information-hacked/
Drake International, the Canadian-based job placement firm, confirmed Wednesday that it has been the victim of a hacking scheme by a group seeking to extort payment in exchange for not releasing the personal information of people who have used Drake’s services.
With offices in nine countries, Drake has become the latest victim in an increasingly common racket where companies face extortion threats from shadowy groups of hackers after a security breach. It’s a problem that may be too big for many businesses to solve themselves, but one they must address, or they face the risk of damage to their reputations and a potential loss of business.
Think for a moment about the possibility of your company's infrastructure being compromised by hackers.
- How valuable would information about your infrastructure be?
- Do you really know how much sensitive information is publicly accessible or easily obtainable with a little creativity?
- How can you stop hacker theft of this information?
As can be seen from the Drake International case, and others like it, security breaches and any related interruptions in the performance of services or applications, can result in direct financial losses, threaten organizations’ reputations, erode customer loyalties, attract negative press, and trigger significant fines and penalties.
Penetration Testing
Litcom has extensive expertise conducting enterprise wide and system specific Threat Risk Assessments (TRAs) and application and web penetration testing. Moreover, Litcom’s comprehensive TRA methodology will ensure that your application, network, and computing infrastructure are thoroughly scrutinized in order to reduce risk and exposure.
A penetration test provides an assessment of the security vulnerabilities. A well-conducted penetration test, performed by a competent organization, will help you determine whether your operational practices, equipment, and policies are up to the task. Properly executed penetration tests can provide evidence that vulnerabilities do exist and that network penetrations are possible. More importantly, they provide a blueprint for remediation in order to start or enhance a comprehensive information protection strategy.
From a business perspective, penetration testing helps safeguard your organization against failure, through:
- Preventing financial loss through fraud (hackers, extortionists and disgruntled employees) or through lost revenue due to unreliable business systems and processes.
- Proving due diligence and compliance to your industry regulators, customers and shareholders. Non-compliance can lead to your organization losing business, receiving heavy fines, gathering bad PR or ultimately failing.
- Protecting your brand by avoiding loss of consumer confidence and business reputation.
From an operational perspective, penetration testing helps shape information security strategy through:
- Identifying vulnerabilities and quantifying their impact and likelihood in order to be managed proactively; budget can be allocated and corrective measures implemented.
Want to learn more? Check out: http://www.litcom.ca/threat-risk-assessment-penetration-testing/
Or contact Litcom: info@litcom.ca