What happened?
Just this past Thursday, Yahoo confirmed a massive security breach that took place in 2014. Actually, one of the world’s largest known security breaches. Cyber hackers managed to get their hands on the personal information of 500 million accounts. This means stolen names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and passwords. Now, Yahoo and its future parent company Verizon have damaging press, police investigations, regulator scrutiny and user outrage on their plates. Not to mention the gaggle of class-action lawsuits coming their way and their multi-billion dollar merger potentially being jeopardized.
What could Yahoo have done to prevent this?
Although the enormity of this data breach seems a surprise to everyone, it is less of a surprised to those who have followed the company closely. In recent years, Yahoo has been the target of multiple serious hacks and has gone through four chief information security officers. In 2012, hackers accessed and publicized login information for more than 450,000 Yahoo users, leading to at least one lawsuit and criticism that Yahoo didn’t encrypt the passwords it stored. A former member of Yahoo’s security team reported to CNN that the company had resisted greater funding and efforts to bolster security, and that security was pushed to the back end as other things took higher priority.
At Veoci, security is fundamental. From safe office practices like ensuring locked doors and password-protected computers to providing fully encrypted data both in transit and at rest, we value the highest level of security. As do our customers. Our cloud-based software allows our customers to stay online and respond to crisis quickly with digital, automated response plans to ensure that no further damage is done due to delayed response times.
One of our customers was recently hit with ransomware, locking down all of their phones and Internet. For three full weeks, they successfully used Veoci via a wireless hot spot as a platform for communication and information sharing. Teams collected evidence and shared them across departments with instant photo sharing. They also used our digital GIS mapping to map outages and share that information with the public.
The lesson to be learned from Yahoo’s hack is that security is never something to be taken lightly. Once customer confidence and trust is lost, it is extremely difficult to regain. Privacy and security are values our founders brought from their past experience at GE and continue to hold to the highest standard at Veoci.
