Businesses are aware of the dangers of a data breach, but business continuity measures to protect a company's files are not happening at the rate that they should be. In fact, these invasions continue to occur at organizations of all sizes—no one is truly immune to such attacks unless they implement the necessary safety measures.
One of UBM's affiliated companies, PR Newswire confirmed that a part of their database was breached earlier this year, according to Computerworld. PR Newswire is a popular press release distributor used by many organizations and public relation agencies.
The source reports that the individuals involved with the Adobe Systems hack could be behind this one as well. An archive of PR Newswire's files was discovered on the same hacker server where source code for Adobe products had been uploaded.
"We are conducting an extensive investigation and have notified appropriate law enforcement authorities," PR Newswire CEO Ninan Chacko said in a blog post. "Based on our preliminary review, we believe that customer payment data were not compromised."
The database contained contact information and credentials from about 10,000 accounts around Europe, Africa and the Middle East. PR Newswire officials are confident that the "actual number of affected customer is much lower, because customers generally maintain multiple accounts."
Those who were possibly impacted were told to reset their passwords, which were encrypted as they passed through the website's algorithm, also known as hashing.
Companies that have not started to implement their own cyber security or disaster recovery strategies may want to consider reaching out to business continuity consultants who are experts in these subject areas.