Over 2.3bn data files of consumers and businesses leaked online

More than 2.3bn files containing critical information like medical data, credit card particulars, payroll information as well as patents for different kinds of IP stand exposed on the Internet causing potential risk of espionage, cyber-crime, data-theft as also other malicious operations for both businesses and consumers.

Security researchers from Digital Shadows a cyber-security firm were the discoverers of the highly critical data saved together with other data inside mis-configured or publicly exposed cloud services and online storage comprising Amazon S3 buckets, rsync servers and SMB (server message block) file shares.

The exposure occurred is a rise of more than 750m files ever-since Digital Shadows conducted a same study during 2018. In percentage terms, the rise is over 50% in spite of considering that consumers worldwide are more powerful compared to anytime before towards charging organizations for failure in protection of personal information thanks to an increasing number of different laws of data protection and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). www.ZDnet.com posted this, May 30, 3019.

GDPR represents legislation which's set to unify and update laws of data privacy in the EU countries. After receiving approval from the European Union Parliament, 14th April, 2016, GDPR became effective 25th May, 2018.

It's been found that the publicly leaked data consists of 326m records from USA, 121m from Germany and 98m from United Kingdom, representing violation of GDPR by many companies which are also endangered with fines of a maximum of EUR20m alternatively 4 per cent of worldwide turnover associated with not adopting appropriate measures for safeguarding their customers' data. www.computerweekly.com posted this May 30, 2019.

A Digital Shadows team called Photon Research Team uncovered that almost half of the data-files i.e. 1.071bn had been leaked through the SMB protocol certain kind of file-sharing technology first developed during 1983 which currently is responsible for the maximum leaked files given organizations desiring more-and-more for enhancing business efficiency via having staff and partners access their data made readily available.

Further according to the report, EU's GDPR has brought results within 2 countries -Holland and Luxembourg- minimizing their overall leakages via the implementation of national laws for aiding enforcement of GDPR.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/3/2019