What Are the Dangers of the Capital One Data Breach?
(Note: companies that could be impacted by the content of this article are listed at the base of the story (desktop version). This article uses third-party references to provide a bullish, bearish and balanced point of view; sources listed in the “Balanced” section)
Capital One, on Monday, reported a data breach of customer’s personal information affecting over 100 million Americans. The Capital One costumer user data had been stored with Amazon.com Inc., on a remote data cloud server where companies will incorporate their web applications using Amazon Web Services (AWS). The AWS cloud data was not compromised the former employee who breached the Capital One web application. An Amazon spokesperson stated, “The perpetrator gained access through a misconfiguration of the web application and not the underlying cloud-based infrastructure.” Multiple other data breaches have occurred over the last couple years and many American’s private information could have been stolen. Federal prosecutors have stated that the Capital One data breach is one of the largest bank data thefts and customers should be prepare extra measures of security to prevent identity theft.