Sensitive financial data on over 5 million Bulgarians stolen by hackers- Comment

News has surfaced that a hacker has stolen the personal details of millions of Bulgarians and has emailed download links to the stolen data to local news publications. The information is reportedly from the country’s tax agency, in an attack that is claimed to have compromised nearly every adult’s personal records.

Full Story Here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/hacker-steals-data-of-millions-of-bulgarians-emails-it-to-local-media/

Commenting on the news is Jonathan Deveaux, head of enterprise data protection at comforte AG:

“Even though the purpose of this hack does not seem to be financially motivated, the fact that data from millions of citizens in Bulgaria was stolen should be very alarming. This is the 3rd publicized attack on personal data from citizens of a particular country in the last six months (in May 2019, Panama 85% of the data from its citizens, and Australia where 10M records were stolen). Countless other data exposure incidents are happening day after day.

Many cybersecurity advocates are calling for companies to DO MORE to secure the personal data of their subjects. It can start by ensuring that basic data security is at least ‘turned on.’ This means that default data security technology, such as encryption and access controls are in place. Of course, organizations need to take additional steps then to further reduce the risks and likelihood of data exposure, such as data-centric security.

Otherwise, these incidents will seem like “de ja vu” and more countries will be added to the list of “Nations Who Lost Their Citizens’ Data to Hacks.”

(73)