The number and threat of cybercriminals is rising, and they are after your personal information. They are attacking you from every angle they can think of. You are getting bombarded with malware, scams and more ” all in the attempt to gain enough information about you to steal your identity or steal money directly from you.
But you aren’t the only holder of your personal information. Many businesses and government agencies hold pieces of your information, ranging from your email address to your social security number. Cybercriminals know this and target businesses constantly as a source for information. If one of them does breach a company that has your information, here’s what you need to do to stay safe:
Respond Immediately
The moment you find out that a company who has your personal information has been breached, you need to get to work immediately. Putting off fixing any potential damage caused by the data breach is just giving the hackers and criminals more time to accomplish their goal. The really frustrating part is that they probably already have a huge head start on you too.
On average, it takes about 200 days for a company to detect a data breach. That means that typically, cyber criminals have had over 200 days to gain access to your accounts and do whatever they want. Especially when the whistle is blown and people are alerted, they might go into overdrive and stop trying to be sneaky, in an attempt to gain access to as many accounts as possible.
So don’t delay. Start acting right away to prevent or fix any misdoings with your information.
Determining What Is Compromised
You need to find out what information is out in the wild. The first source to finding this out is the company who had the breach. If they just announced the breach, they might still be figuring out what information was stolen, but typically they will know what information is at risk.
If the company can’t and won’t tell what information is at risk, it falls to you to figure out what could have been stolen. If you have any form of account with a business or website, it’s likely that at least your name, email address and password have been stolen. If you have ever bought something on a site, then your credit or debit card might be at risk as well. A leak at other companies, like healthcare and insurance providers, could mean they have access to your social security numbers or private health information. Look at whatever information a breached company has of yours and assume that all of it has been stolen.
Another scary potential for data breaches are apps that you have on your phone. For example, many doctors are using apps to communicate with patients, but healthcare also has had some of the worst data breaches. Apps often require multiple accesses on a phone, and couple that with information needed to authorize things in healthcare, could lead to dangerous combinations. Basically, by breaking a healthcare communication app, cyber criminals could potentially find out everything like: their names, birthdate, social security, health problems, prescriptions, and their current physical location.
Updating Passwords
One of the most powerful pieces of information a cyber criminal wants is your email address and password. Over half of all people use the same password for multiple accounts, and that probably includes you. If the password for your email is the same you use on a breached account, then your email account, and any other accounts connected to it, are compromised.
So, go ahead and update passwords if that sounds like you. In today’s world of password management tools, it’s easy to make every password for every account unique. It’s important to immediately update the password on the breached account and make sure all of the information on it is still correct.
Inform the Bank, Monitor Your Credit
If there is the chance that your identity has been stolen, start investigating it. A good start is to contact your bank and let them you know you might be at risk. That way, they can help monitor things like your credit, deny transactions, and help mitigate damages.
Alongside your bank, ask for recent credit reports yourself so you can keep tabs on what is happening. Then, if charges that don’t belong to you start to pop up, you can contest them, or even freeze your credit to stop any further charges. Identity theft can lower your credit score, and while you can get those negative consequences dropped, it is a headache you don’t need.
It’s also important to file a report with the police if your identity has been stolen and contact the Social Security offices to file a fraud report and get a new social security number.
Stay Safe, Stay Diligent
Preventing and avoiding identity theft requires paying attention to what is going on in the world and who has access to your information. Not every business will email or go out of their way to inform people directly they had a data breach, instead just making a general statement. To check if your information has been released as part of a breach, a good place to check is haveibeenpwned.com. While the site doesn’t have every single smaller breach, it does have records of major ones like the Adobe and Yahoo breaches.
Monitor sites with your information and respond quickly if one of them gets breached. If your data is compromised, do all you can to protect yourself from future damage and change whatever you can to reinstate your security.
