With the arrival of new year 2023, one must not forget to take lessons from the past year. Lets see how Post-Pandemic World in 2022 witnessed a Surge in Cyber Attacks by a glimpse some of the greatest data breaches of 2022.
Covid-19 effects are not limited to health and the economy. The post-pandemic world in 2022 also reeled from a surge in cyberattacks and data breaches.
Cyberattacks in India tripled in the last three years. A recent report showed that government bodies in India suffered the highest number of cyberattacks, at 82 in 2022. The number was up eightfold over the previous year.
“Post-pandemic, lots of businesses have digitised, and there is increased use of technology. But security has not been thought about,” said Kanishk Gaur, a cybersecurity expert.
“People are not behind corporate firewalls since they are working remotely,” he added. “Security has not been a part of the design.” As a result, systems remain vulnerable,” Gaur explained to Business Standard.
Biggest Data Breaches of 2022
1. WhatsApp data leak
In one of the biggest data breaches ever, WhatsApp data of nearly half a billion users from 84 countries worldwide, including India, was breached and put up for sale online, according to a report by Cybernews.
2. Twitter hack
As Elon Musk went gaga over transforming Twitter, at least 5.4 million Twitter user records were stolen via an internal bug and leaked online on a hacker forum.
3. AIIMS Cyberattack
India’s top medical institute, AIIMS, came to a near-halt in November after a massive cyber attack derailed everyday work, appointments and registration, billing, and lab reports. The attack corrupted files and data on the main and backup servers of the hospital. According to reports, the data of millions of patients, including bureaucrats and politicians, was affected.
4. Indian Railway data breach
A hacker sold the personal information of nearly 30 million railway passengers on the dark web. These details included the name, email, phone number, gender, and other personal information of several government officials and notable personalities, among others, the hacker claimed.
5. Financial data of over 9 million cardholders leaked
Cybersecurity researchers said in October they discovered a massive leak involving over nine million cardholders’ financial data, including customers of the State Bank of India.
What can you do to protect yourself?
As an end user, it’s important that you change your user IDs and passwords frequently. “It’s important that you change your passwords once every 15 days,” according to Gaur.
Here are top 10 tips to protect yourself from cyberattacks
But most of us have unknowingly had our cyber safety threatened. Your personal information can be destroyed – or you can lose your savings, identity, livelihood or worse. The good news is, you can beat the scammers at their own game! Follow these 10 quick, easy ways and protect yourself today.
- Use online banking wisely.
- Mitigate cyber threats on mobile phones.
- Use Online gaming safely.
- Have knowledge of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) for making calls using a broadband connection through the telephone lines.
- Update your computer software regularly to reduce the risk.
- Use antivirus and anti-malware software to add a protection layer to your system.
- Ensure that your payment gateway provider and any other third party connected to your site is safe.
- When you use the internet through a VPN, all your data traffic is sent through an encrypted virtual tunnel, so use VPN.
- Users should also build layers of security. For example, users can enable multi-factor authentication on WhatsApp, which safeguards their data.
- Phishing is a cyber attack that involves the use of camouflaged email. Be aware of phishing attack.
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Let us know if any of our tips were useful for you.