A data breach is a security incident exposing confidential information. It could lead to the theft of your personal information such as social security numbers, financial account information, health information, passwords, etc. If the data breach occurred due to the company’s negligent practices, then the company may be held accountable for putting its customers at risk.

If you are a data breach victim, contact Counsel Hound for a no-cost consultation and case evaluation.

Recent Data Breaches

2019: Capital One announced 106 million customers had personal information exposed during a data breach.[1]

2018: Marriott International’s data breach compromised up to 500 million guests’ personal information.[2]

2017: Equifax data breach exposed social security numbers, credit card numbers, and driver’s license numbers of more than 145 million American customers.[3]

2016: Yahoo experienced two data breaches, affecting 1.5 billion user accounts.[4]

2015: Anthem Health Care was hacked, exposing the information of 80 million customers.[5]

How Do Data Breaches Happen?

According to the 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 85% of breaches involved human error, 36% involved phishing, and 11% involved ransomware.[6]

  1. Social engineering: utilizing psychological techniques to convince a person to breach confidentiality.
  2. Basic Web Application Attacks: includes any simple web application attacks.
  3. System intrusion: hacking into a system to achieve their data breach goals.
  4. Misc. Errors: unintentional errors that result in a system security compromise.
  5. Privilege misuse: unauthorized and inappropriate use of system privileges.
  6. Lost and Stolen Assets: missing assets containing system information- stolen or misplaced.
  7. Denial of Service: system attacks that limit the availability of networks and systems.

How to Protect Your Personal Data

  • Create strong, secure passwords that are unique to each account.
  • Only give your social security number when necessary.
  • Monitor your financial account statements for any unauthorized transactions.
  • Shred any documents containing personal information before throwing it away.
  • Check your free credit reports every year to confirm the accounts listed are yours.