It has been uncovered that a data breach has potentially affected millions of South Africans after being discovered by security researcher Troy Hunt. The huge trove of data, which includes property ownership, employment history, income and company directorships is thought to have contained more than 30m unique South African ID numbers. Javvad Malik, Security Advocate at AlienVault commented below.
Javvad Malik, Security Advocate at AlienVault:
“Breaches can occur at any time. However, in this instance, it appears as if there were no detection controls in place at all that would have alerted to a breach. Not only was it not detected, but it’s proving to be difficult to determine where the data originated from.
Knowing your assets, controlling them, holding data only for required purposes and duration, and having monitoring controls in place are all fundamental security practices and could have all helped in preventing these kinds of incidents.”
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