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Don't let "Breach Fatigue" Risk Your Identity When Data Breach Events Occur!
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08/19/2013

By Mark Pribish, Vice President and ID Theft Practice Leader, Merchants Information Solutions  

Based on my over 20 years of ID theft and data breach experience, I have concluded that breach fatigue has relegated most data breach news events from front page headlines to the back pages, reflecting a lesser news value and a place of insignificance.

For example, U.S. prosecutors recently charged six foreign nationals this week with credit and debit card hacking thefts that cost U.S. and European companies more than $300 million in payment card losses resulting in the biggest cyber fraud case filed in U.S. history.

In my opinion and because of breach fatigue, most people affected by this data breach event will not understand and/or appreciate the personal/consumer risks and economic impact - because it is just another headline that is soon to be forgotten in a long line of never ending data breach events in the news.

Unfortunately, the impact of data breaches has been difficult to understand and visualize – until now. A  London based website called Information is Beautiful, which was founded by David McCandless (a data journalist and information designer), helps connect the dots through visual and interactive graphics.

McCandless and Information is Beautiful created this visual data breach link which is a new interactive graphic that highlights the biggest data breaches over the last 10 years.

This interactive graphic/link offers a "cool factor" and includes filters for the type, sensitivity and breach by industry group.

I believe this new form of visual learning on data breach events will help consumers (along with the organizations affected by a data breach) have a greater understanding and clarity by visualizing ID theft and data breach information including facts, data, issues, statistics, and questions.

This visual data breach tool (please see above) can also help consumers and organizations understand the unique connections, patterns and personal/economic impact of a specific data breach event by providing the number of victims involved, as well as a clickable brief synopsis of the event.

For those individuals who want to dig deeper into these data breaches they will find links to the original news stories such as how usernames and emails - which are often ignored by consumers/affected individuals when lost or stolen - can be used by hackers in scams.

To conclude, DO NOT let breach fatigue impact your understanding or influence your underestimating the next ID theft and data breach news report that might affect you or a family member.