A Recent Breach at Christie’s Proved the True Risk of a Data Breach For Individuals, as Well as Businesses

A Recent Breach at Christie’s Proved the True Risk of a Data Breach For Individuals, as Well as Businesses

Not even art is safe in the world of cyberattacks. In mid-August this year, a test of Christie’s security system revealed a key vulnerability that could have leaked the GPS of every photograph, artwork, or sculpture in minutes. Christie’s itself – which is an art auction house – is a world leader in the art and luxury business, and yet their system had a clear and simple mistake. According to Zentrust Partners – which is the research company that carried out the cybersecurity test – this mistake revealed a host of confidential information, including exact GPS coordinates of the art – around 10% of uploaded images had these details.Luckily for the art auction house, this was a breach carried out by reputable researchers, and no information was actually placed into the wrong hands. But it could have been very different. Just this year, high-profile companies such as T-Mobile have been subjected to two major data breaches, with one hacker revealing the pins, names, and phone numbers of over 800 customers.

Incidents like this reveal the broader danger of businesses hoarding sensitive data on individuals. Not only this, it reveals how important it is for people to be able to remove data themselves – if companies as big as T-Mobile and Christie’s can be breached, how many other companies could fall foul of a cyberattack? With thousands of people unwittingly giving over their data to companies every day, it has never been more crucial – artist or not! –  to understand and undertake widespread data removal before it’s too late – click here for an A to Z of opt-out guides.

Why Was This Data Accessible To Hackers?

There will be some who question how big brands and businesses like Christie’s could allow their systems to have such a fundamental flaw, but the truth is that even the most robust security measures can be targeted by hackers. While the world of cybersecurity is improving, so too is the ability to coordinate unique attacks, and with each new security measure, there will come a new technique to get around it.

Consider that $219 billion will be spent on cybersecurity this year, and that number is expected to grow to $300 billion by 2026. Despite this, a cyberattack occurs every 39 seconds, with over 800,000 people and businesses falling victim to them each year. Many of these attacks are simple data breaches. Since 2013, as many as 3.8 million records are breached and stolen every day. That’s 44 every second.

Is This Expected To Get Worse?

Sadly, the more you look at it, the more bleak the picture gets. According to recent data, damage from cyberattacks will cost the world around $10.5 trillion every year by 2025. This is a 300% increase from the cybersecurity landscape in 2015, so it’s clear that the problem is only getting worse. With each new data breach, however, we are all reminded about the risks we face when online and interacting with third parties.

With the cybersecurity market anticipated to exceed $500 billion by 2030, there is no dispute that companies are doing what they can to protect themselves, but we as individuals need to be just as proactive. Firstly, the cybersecurity world is always changing, so we need to keep up to date with all the latest cybersecurity news. Secondly, we need to recognise how much of our data is being absorbed into the online space, and we need to do everything we can to remove it, before someone else removes it for their own purposes.