Written by Alex Bach
Well, it’s happened again! Yet another data breach has come to the attention of the public. This time it wasn’t a major retailer like Target or Neiman Marcus, but a casino.
If you’ve picked up on the trend from these recent and expansive series of data breaches is that hackers are very, very good at what they do–though not good in any moral sense, good in the sense that if they want to hack into something they will. And as frightening as that may sound–as well it should be–this doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself. Here are a couple ways you can protect yourself from identity theft.
Jackpot!
The websites of Las Vegas Sands casinos were hacked February 10th, 2014, motivated, as the hacking group claims, as a political retaliation against the casino’s CEO, Sheldon Adelson. The hackers broke into the casino’s servers and stole numerous data–including employee’s social security numbers and email addresses–and published it in a Youtube video.
What’s perhaps most unfortunate about the breach is that the hactivists were targeting the CEO and instead placed the bulk of the damage on the employees. With their social security numbers and email addresses leaked the identities of these unassuming employees was compromised.
The most affected employees were those of the Bethlehem Sands casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Sands has offered the employees free credit monitoring services and other tools to help prevent against identity theft.
Wide Ranging
Initial reports claimed that the hackers hadn’t uncovered any credit cards but it appears the breach may have gone deeper than originally predicted. New reports show the grow was able to dig deep into some of the internal drives of the casino. The casino chain includes the two casinos in Las Vegas and the Bethlehem casino, but also includes their international casinos in Singapore and China’s Macau.
Conclusion
The government is working to try and expose the identities of the hackers and put them to justice but, like a hydra, if one goes down another two will likely pop up. The important thing for the average consumer is to protect yourself. As these breaches show, no one can predict who will be targeted, when, or how deep it will go. And you’ll want to take steps to protect yourself before a breach occurs, not after.