Hey CEO’s. Here are 19 Ways I can Steal Your Data in 2019

You think you have good security as a CEO, keep reading, because here’s 19 proven ways I can steal your data, get you fired, and then get you and your company tangled up with multi-million-dollar lawsuits, according to Charles Denyer, one of the world’s foremost experts on cybersecurity and data privacy.

1. I Can Send you a Really Tricky email. Sending emails that contain links and download attachments with Ransomware – or trick you into giving up confidential information – is really quite easy. You’d be surprised at the number of employees and C level officers who are tricked by these campaigns.
2. I Can Employ any Number of Social Engineering Tactics. Stealing information doesn’t have to be high-tech and complex, after all, we’re all human and some of the easiest ways to steal data occurs by simple human interaction. There are literally dozens of social engineering tactics that can be employed by nefarious individuals.
3. I Can Give you Free Stuff That You Love. Who doesn’t love free stuff? We’ve all gone to conferences and tradeshows and walked out with a bag of goodies with the feeling of a kid in a candy store. USB drives, pens, t-shirts – the list is endless – and that’s where the problem begins.
4. I Can Go Dumpster Diving. While we no doubt live in a world that’s becoming more and more digital as the days go by, you’d be surprised at how much confidential and highly sensitive data is still found on paper documents.
5. I can Use Brute Force. No, not physically overwhelming you, rather, using an old-fashioned technology attack method by employing any number of software tools that guess your user credentials.
6. I Can Bring in a USB Drive and Start Downloading Data. Don’t have a strict policy against USB drives, memory sticks and other portable storage devices? Probably should put one in place – like now – as insider threats (yes, employees do steal things) are one of the fastest growing forms of data breaches.
7. I Have Access to Accounts – and Data – that I Shouldn’t Have. Shockingly, a Ponemon report on data found that 75% of employees say they’ll have access to data they shouldn’t and 25% of employees are willing to sell data to a competitor for less than $8000.
8. You Fired Me, and I just Walked Out the Door. Too many times, companies terminate an employee but fail to implement any real termination procedures, or worse, they terminate an employee when that person is out of the office. Not good, according to one H.R. expert.
9. I can Hack your insecure Network in under 60 Seconds. Don’t think so? Scores of hackers get into networks in less time than it takes for you to finish a quick phone call to a co-worker.
10. I can Go Low-Tech. Any employee can walk around the office and just start grabbing almost anything from a co-worker’s offices and cubicles. From USB drives to sensitive documents laying out in the open – or passwords on a Post-it Note (that’s a big no-no!), getting the goods on a company has never been easier.
11. I Can Expose Your Weak API Security Practices. Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) for the non-techies of the world, are computing programs that interface for helping applications, databases and all type of devices communicate with each other.
12. I Have Access to Cloud Storage, Cloud Applications, and Developer Tools. Familiar with box.com, Dropbox, Google Drive, Salesforce, SharePoint, GitHub, Pastebin and dozens of other business collaboration tools? If so, then you also know the dangers of having massive amounts of data sitting out on these websites, just waiting to be downloaded by employees, or some other person who has obtained credential access.
13. I’m Your New Consultant, and I Haven’t Been Background Checked. It’s surprising how many companies hire consultants and don’t bother to perform any type of meaningful due-diligence on such individuals before bringing them on board.
14. I Can Make an Honest Mistake. Most – but not all – employees, are hard-working, honest, and would not engage in deliberate acts of data theft. Yet unfortunately, even honest. Law-abiding employees make mistakes – often big mistakes – those that result in massive data breaches.
15. I Can Create Massive Data Dumps and Nobody Notices. Most employees have access to some type of highly sensitive and confidential information – after all – they need it to perform their job. What’s surprising is how little oversight there is on data access, and monitoring one’s data access.
16. I’m the IT Guy, and Nobody is Watching Me. Users with privileged/elevated/superuser access – those responsible for overseeing an organization’s network – are unfortunately never monitored by anyone else. After all, they’re the top dogs in the organization when it comes to network security and access, so why watch over them, right? Wrong.
17. I can be a Copycat and do just what the “Wolf of Manchester” did. An insurance company worker described as the ‘Wolf of Manchester’ made thousands of pounds by stealing and selling customer data from an insurance company.
18. I Created It, so it Belongs to me, right? Many employees think that when they actually create certain documents – white papers, PowerPoint presentations, training seminars, and more – that they can take it with them as they move along to another company.
19. I Can be that Insider Threat that is Now More Dangerous than Ever. Here’s some sobering news. In the 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index, IBM found that approximately 60 percent of all attacks were carried out by insiders that organizations trusted.

Download the full copy of Hey, CEO’s. here are 19 Ways I Can Steal Your Data in 2019. Here’s what you’ll learn with my free guide: Data theft is at an all-time high, and it’s only going to get worse.

• Businesses are being attacked from both internal and external threats.
• Increased legal and compliance measures are forcing CEO’s to re-think data privacy.
• Learn how criminals are stealing your data, and what you can do about it.
• Learn how to protect your data, and how to use cybersecurity as a competitive advantage.