PII Of Time Warner Cable Customers Vulnerable

In response to multiple reports that a Data leak exposed millions of Time Warner Cable customers’ PII, NuData Security is offering perspective.

Lisa Baergen, APR, MMC, Marketing Director at NuData Security:

“The numbers of events in which sensitive user data or personally identifiable information (PII) is left exposed on an unsecured server continue to climb. The fact that a trusted provider appears to be implicated in this event demonstrates why it’s so easy for fraudsters to get their hands on PII through the Dark Web, and create fraudulent identities for account takeovers, new lines of credit, and fraudulent purchases.

“This particular exposure is troubling, as the open vulnerability appears easy to exploit by the bad actors.  It underscores that all organizations entrusted with personal data need to up their game by being more attentive to basic server security, and by adopting more advanced technologies such as passive biometrics to safeguard consumer accounts from the expected end game by hackers. Unfortunately, other organizations and the compromised consumers themselves will probably be the ultimate victims of snafus such as this. That is why solutions such as passive biometrics and behavioral analytics — which identify users by their personal behaviors and which can’t be mimicked by bad actors — are increasingly being embraced and adopted by all organizations handling PII, both to ensure that their data is worthless to the bad guys because they can’t access legitimate authenticated accounts, and that transactions are conducted by good, authentic users – not fraudsters.”