News
Postcard app Touchnote suffers data breach - expert comment
November 2015 by Mark Bower, global director at HPE Security
The team behind Touchnote, a popular Android app for sending photos you’ve taken as postcards, has sent an email out to customers announcing that the service was hit by a data breach, resulting in customer information such as name and address being accessed. Touchnote notes that the last four digits from customer cards was compromised in the breach, but the company is quick to point out that it doesn’t store full card numbers, expiration dates or security codes, so that information should be safe. Further, passwords were not compromised in the breach because the company encrypts them, but Touchnote is still recommending that customers change their passwords just in case.
Please see below for commentary from Mark Bower, global director at HPE Security - Data Security. Feel free to use it in any stories you may be writing on this breach.
“Securing customer data obtained by mobile apps is no different that securing other data - with the available technologies today to easily and quickly protect sensitive data, it’s a proven, reliable way to also protect customer trust and satisfaction. There’s simply no excuse today not to follow best practices of encrypting all sensitive personal and financial data as it enters a system, at rest, in use and in motion. The ability to render data useless if lost or stolen, through data-centric encryption, is an essential benefit to ensure data remains secure.
Cyber criminals today are motivated to steal enterprise data, intellectual property and employee or customer information. Hackers are always looking for a way to exploit a system in a way that they can then turn stolen data into cold, hard cash. There is a definite risk if credit card information is obtained. However businesses need to also think about protecting personal information about their customers like name, full address, phone number and email address. Criminals could then use this information to open bogus accounts or sell it for use in more targeted larger-scale spear-phishing or identity theft attacks.
Beyond the threat to sensitive data, companies need to be concerned with the impact such an event can have on their reputation and, ultimately, on their bottom line. A data-centric approach to security is the industry-accepted cornerstone needed to allow companies to mitigate the risk and impact of cyber attacks and other attempts to get this information.”
