The Truth Behind Cyber Hacks

Over the past few years it seems like more and more companies are dealing with cyber hacks. Many individuals information is being stolen without their knowledge whether it’s their email addresses or their Social Security numbers, dealing with cyber hacks is a pain.

This week I was able to chat with Shaun from PrivateGiant. His company tries to make people who are using these big tech giants have information systems that are more private and secure. PrivateGiant does the research to figure out what people want and need regarding cyber security and how to prevent these cyber hacks.  Shaun told me about why these cyber hacks are happening so frequently and what the future looks like for these cyber hacks.

In the past five to ten years the nature of cyber hacks has shifted from an annoyance to a valuable black market. Over time, people have figured out there is a value in people’s personal information. While personal information like a LinkedIn or Uber account may not have a large value, it is all the collected information about one person that makes it have a large value. The more and more personal information that is collected leads to a bigger profile which can be worth much more to hackers. The head of the FTC has said that the amount of information these hackers has is creepy, which many consumers would agree with.

With all this personal information that is creepily being stored, a big black market business of selling and trading is taking place. After a large scale hack takes place, fullzs go out for sale on the black market. Fullzs are what stores all the information that has been hacked from your credit card numbers to the name of your first pet to your medical records. The more hacking that takes place, the more information is added to the fullzs.

So why are cyber hackers continuing to get more and more information? Consumers keep giving it to them. With every new online service and product that emerges, people are being given more abilities to share their information.

And why can’t we stop this? There is no legal way to prevent this from happening. As our technology continues to grow and people continue to give out their information to companies, cyber hacks will continue. Many companies who are storing this information are not encrypting their data nor do they have the policies they need to protect consumers information.

What can we do? Consumers can try and prevent this by encouraging companies that the data they collect must be encrypted. Encrypted data means that the data is unreadable to anyone outside of the sender and the recipient. If all companies encrypted their data, hackers would not be able to receive as much information therefore limiting their black market cyber hacking growth.

Thanks to Shaun for all your valuable information on cyber hacks.

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