vpnMentors Found Large Data Breach in Ecuador

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Report: Ecuadorian Breach Reveals Sensitive Personal Data
vpnMentors research team has found a large data breach that may impact millions of individuals in Ecuador. The leaked database includes over 20 million individuals. The data breach involves around 18 GB of data on an unsecured server located in Miami, FL, owned by Ecuadorian company Novaestrat.

Comments

We received the following comment from Christophe Lambert, director, systems engineering, strategic business EMEA at Cohesity, after working at HPE, SimpliVity and NetApp:

"This latest of data breaches is not something you can ignore. Moving past the scandal of the fact such personal information has been made accessible, it's another example of a misconfigured database causing strife. Regardless of the country of origin here, its data management 101 to get permissions right and configurations accurate. Given the sensitivity of the data we’re looking at here, this is a veritable treasure chest for spammers and phishers, and help should be given to educate them on best practices.

"Identifying and addressing vulnerabilities has become a major challenge for enterprises today. According to a recent Ponemon survey, the majority of organisations that suffered a data breach in the past two years say it was caused by a known vulnerability that had not been patched, and 37% of organisations say don't even scan for vulnerabilities.

"This lack of awareness is what causes situations like the one in Ecuador, and organisations who use increasingly sprawling and complex infrastructure will continue to be caught out if they’re not adequately assessing that infrastructure. Scanning systems, including backup data, for exposures, permissions and configurations issues and other vulnerabilities must form a key pillar of any organisation’s data protection strategy.

"When it comes to data management and processing in big government, there is work to be done. The reality between what should be done, and what is happening is significant."