2019 was one of the years that experienced a large number of security breaches and data leaks
Below are some of the most significant violations that occurred during the past year.
LIFELABS
The personal health information of approximately 15 million Canadians was leaked by LifeLabs, Canada's largest healthcare company, which fell victim to a cyberattack on November 1, 2019.
The attack became known on December 17, and the company officially announcedthat it had paid the ransom demanded by the hackers to get back the data, which included “names, addresses, emails, logins, passwords, dates of birth, health card numbers, and laboratory test results.”
As the company claimed, the test results of 85,000 Ontario residents from 2016 or earlier have been leaked.
The company offered one year of insurance for identity theft and dark web as compensation to those affected by the breach.
The phone numbers of approximately 419 million Facebook, who were linked to their accounts, were compromised by malicious users in an unencrypted database.
As Tech Crunch reported, the leaked data involved 133 million users in the US, 18 million in the UK and 50 million in Vietnam.
Of course, this is not the first time that the leading social networking platform has faced such a serious security issue, since one of the most significant data breaches was caused by the Cambridge Analytica, with 80% of all user accounts affected.
DESJARDINS GROUP
The data of approximately 2.9 million Desjardins members and 173,000 business members was breached on June 20. However, on November 1, it was revealed that the actual number of affected members was 4.2 million across Ontario and Quebec. The culprit appears to have been a former employee of the company. Desjardins claimed that members’ personal information, including name, date of birth, social security number, address, phone number, email address and banking information, was compromised.
FIRST AMERICAN
According to Tech Crunch, the financial information of approximately 885 million Americans was exposed after an error on the website of financial services company First American.
The breach included personal information such as bank account numbers, statements, mortgage and tax documents, social security numbers and driver's license photos.
The breach affected data dating back to 2003.
CAPITAL ONE
Capital One 's servers were hacked in March, exposing the personal information of more than 100 million Americans and six million Canadians, according to CNET.
The stolen data included names, addresses, dates of birth, transaction details, social security numbers and linked bank account numbers, from 2005 to 2019.
