Another glowing reminder about the importance of IT security and ensuring your business is protected.
Reputation.com is a website that’s used to help bury negative search results pertaining to you and your business. But despite the company’s mission to ensure users’ privacy, their site was recently breached. On Tuesday, April 30, 2013, the online reputation management company sent a letter to all customers letting them know that its security personnel found and shut down an external attack on the network. The company said they changed every user’s password, even though it’s “highly unlikely” that the passwords can be decrypted.
According to the letter, the intruder managed to access:
- Names,
- Email addresses,
- Physical addresses,
- Phone numbers,
- Occupational information, and
- Dates of birth.
So what wasn’t accessed?
- Social Security Numbers or Driver’s License Numbers (Reputation.com doesn’t request these.)
- Financial information including bank account information and credit card numbers (Reputation.com doesn’t store this information.)
- Account details such as why users started using Reputation.com.
- Any communication between Reputation.com and users.
- Details revolving around the services users receive.
Interestingly enough, the company wasn’t legally obligated to tell users about the breach; however, they believed it was important enough to let their users know. It’s notable that Reputation.com has gone above and beyond their disclosure requirements, and kudos to Reputation.com for salting and hashing passwords.
People use Reputation.com to keep their personal and business information private. It’s ironic that just the opposite happened. Reputation.com insists they have stopped this attack from further compromising their users’ private information.
Security is essential to the success of your business. Don’t neglect your obligation to run a secure business. Our IT security services can help—our technology professionals are skilled in ensuring your business is continually secured from the threats of attacks that businesses face online every day.
We invite you to contact us today to book a no obligation 30-minute security consult.
