Virgin Media has apologised after the details of 900,000 customers were left unsecured and accessible for around 10 months as a result of a data breach. Joe Hancock, Partner and Head of MDR Cyber discussed the data breach on LBC with Andrew Castle. He said:
“Data breaches don’t always have to be an active attack by a third party. The Virgin Media incident is likely to be an error rather than a deliberate act. Human error and simple mistakes are more common than the sophisticated attacks that are well publicised.
Our team has found multiple issues of databases and other data storage being exposed publicly leading to customer notifications, including data from travel visas to detailed customer records leaking online.
In these cases organisations need to focus on getting the basics of cyber right, from designing security into their systems to testing how it has been implemented and training their staff.
This is a timely reminder that whilst headlines may be grabbed by other global issues cyber security risks still remain.”