By Isabella van den Ende

Last month an automobile manufacturer revealed that a data breach had exposed the Social Security numbers (SSNs) of thousands of its employees. This breach, caused by a ransom attack in November 2023, shows the urgent need to invest in more advanced threat detection, encryption tools, and employee training to mitigate the risk of breaches.

What Happened?

In November 2023, hackers exploited an external Virtual Private Network (VPN) vulnerability to gain access to the internal network, compromise systems and demand a ransom. They accessed sensitive data, including the Social Security Numbers (SSNs) of over 53,000 current and former employees. The company informed affected individuals and state officials but didn’t disclose whether it paid the ransom. The company only told employees about the incident in a town hall meeting a month later, denying them the opportunity to quickly take protective action in response to the breach.

The Impact

The exposure of SSNs can lead to identity theft and financial fraud for affected individuals. For the company, the breach caused reputational damage, legal issues, and financial losses. The delayed notification to employees and the public further worsened the situation, hurting trust and transparency.

Using DLP for Better Protection

Enhanced Data Loss Prevention (DLP) measures could have helped the company avoid this breach. Here’s how specific DLP strategies could help strengthen the security of organizations like this:
Dynamic Data Masking in our Enterprise Browser (EB) can hide sensitive data like social security numbers or credit card information, allowing employees access to some data, but obscuring the details for all but a small handful of authorized users that require full visibility. The EB can apply the masking locally so there is no dependency on back-end systems and no code changes to the application required. Data masking is particularly helpful for legacy applications that can be incredibly challenging to modify. The browser-based masking reduces the risk of exposure even if there’s a breach by not allowing users to store sensitive data locally. To help with privacy and compliance mandates, administrators can also configure which user or group gets to see this sensitive data. Our data masking supports use cases like showing just the last 4 digits of a credit card number to your customer support representatives. Tailoring the data masking with customizable patterns using regular expressions (regexp) further enhances data protection.

At Mammoth Cyber, we offer an extensive array of DLP capabilities:

1. Content Scanning:
• Detecting Sensitive Information: Scanning for predefined types of personal data can automatically find and protect sensitive information, preventing problems before they arise.
• Customizable Scanning: Custom regexp scanning can detect non-standard data formats, ensuring thorough protection.
2. Sensitivity Labels:
• DLP Policies in the Mammoth Browser can read sensitivity labels configured in Microsoft Purview Information Protection. If you have already defined sensitivity labels in Purview, Mammoth can ingest those labels and enforce policies based on them.
• These labels help classify and protect data based on its sensitivity. Assigning these labels allows the enforcement of access controls, preventing unauthorized access.
3. Advanced Settings:
• Audit Mode: Monitoring data access and movement without restrictions provides insights into potential risks and user behavior.
• File Type and Size Limits: Setting limits on file types and sizes can prevent the transfer of large amounts of sensitive data, reducing the risk of data leaks.

Moving Forward

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, integrating dynamic data masking, comprehensive content scanning, and strong sensitivity labeling into a DLP strategy is essential. By prioritizing these measures, organizations can better protect all data but specifically sensitive information, gain stronger user trust, and provide a significantly more secure digital environment. Using the Enterprise Browser to protect your most sensitive data is exactly what Mammoth Cyber intended with our newest software features.

This recent data breach shows the clear need for better cybersecurity. To protect sensitive information and maintain trust, companies must take proactive steps. Investing in Mammoth’s Enterprise Browser with advanced DLP capabilities would be a strong step to prevent data theft in future breaches.