At Titan Power, we take security seriously and design all of our data center infrastructures with your confidence in mind. Technology is always evolving, and while savvy business owners can surely capitalize on that trend, unfortunately so can hackers. In 2013, The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) faced two cyber attacks that breached secure servers and compromised the personal information of DOE employees. This acts as a very real warning for other businesses, as even the most secure servers can still fall victim to cyber threats.
Which Details Were Stolen
Most of us would probably be happy to go a lifetime without receiving a “cyber incident” notice from our employers, especially U.S. government workers. In 2013, the Department of Energy faced not one by two security breaches. The second attack compromised the personal information of some 14,000 employees, including:
- Names of current and past employees
- Their social security numbers
- Their payroll data.
Although authorities maintain that no classified data regarding the government was targeted or stolen, these types of cyber attacks clearly pose very serious threats to personal privacy. This is especially true when sensitive information like social security numbers are involved that can be the fast track to identity theft.
Who’s at Risk
Unfortunately, any business that has a human resources system can be at risk for cyber attacks. Hackers need only get access to your HR data management system to expose everything from social security numbers to physical addresses. For the savvy hacker, that’s a piece of cake. Prior to the second cyber attack on the Department of Energy, for example, there had been a string of security breaches involving several high profile companies. Some of those targeted included:
- Apple
- The New York Times
- The Washington Post
- The Journal.
Even more problematic is the fact that these hackers are often great at covering up their identities. It can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine who is behind a cyber attack as the Department of Energy discovered firsthand.
What You Can Do
Unless you have the time, patience, and overhead to switch back to physical bookkeeping, unfortunately the threat of cyber attacks will always part of the way that businesses of today and tomorrow look at security. The best way you can safeguard your employees and their information is to engineer, update, and manage your data centers with security in mind.
Contact Us
At Titan Power, we take pride in training our technicians on the most current data security protocols and building them into our systems. If you’re worried about a potential cyber breach or are interested in updating your current data management system to a more secure server, call us today at (800) 509-6170 to see how we can help.
