While data breaches have become a nearly daily occurrence in news headlines — most recently, Drizly and the Ritz Hotel — it's important that businesses and security professionals understand the cascading effect these incidents have on the broader online landscape. Regardless of the size of the business reporting a breach or amount of consumer data exposed, all businesses are threatened by a "fraud supply chain" that feeds off these types of breaches.
The fraud supply chain is an interconnected ecosystem that allows cybercriminals to use different attack vectors to steal from consumers and businesses, often through more complex ways than merely buying stolen credit cards to make large purchases. Therefore, fraudsters can feed off any type of data to provide both a bridge for gaining further personal information from existing victims and a springboard for executing larger attacks.
Even the Smallest Breaches Cause Ripple EffectsData breaches are almost always a means to an end. For example, seemingly minor information such as usernames or passwords can arm fraudsters with enough to execute more sophisticated attacks. Often, bad actors will harvest user information obtained from various data breaches to develop complete user profiles. Additionally, typical consumer behaviors can often make this easier for fraudsters; studies have shown 65% of users repurpose their passwords across multiple platforms. Data breaches provide attackers with the credentials needed to execute more widespread attacks such as:
Accumulating More Personal Information Through Phishing ScamsOften, a minor data breach is not e ..
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