Many organizations sweat bullets at the thought of a data breach exposing sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) that they've been entrusted to protect. But when it comes to protecting other information such as emal addresses and passwords that can be reset, many within IT are not so concerned — after all, these morsels of information are not usually regulated the same way social security numbers and credit card digits are. However, breaches that expose these kinds of information have the potential to do a lot of organizational damage as well. And they happen all the time. Consider the Gawker breach reported in December, which exposed 1.3 million usernames and passwords and caused the media outlet a severe hit to its reputation. Similarly, in December email marketer Silverpop experienced an email database breach that affected hundreds of large customers such as McDonald's and Walgreens. Here's why 'inconsequential' breaches are actually a big deal after all.
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Hackers Will Use Those Database Weaknesses Elsewhere In The Infrastructure
The first foray into your email database may be just the tip of the iceberg for hackers' future attacks. They could potentially use access into a less sensitive database as a toe-hold to gain access into other more important databases.
You're Probably Breaking Privacy Policy Promises
You may not be regulated on your privacy policy assurances, but if those sort of things matter to you (or your customers) then be aware that these breaches break your promises to customers.
Your Customers Will Be Barraged With Spam
Hackers will glut your customers' inboxes with spam if given the keys to your email database — a direct result of your broken privacy guarantees.
You'll Experience Damage to Your Reputation
While the monetary damage to reputation is still highly debatable, the fact is that customers look askance at any type of data breach, be it of their PII or not.
The Bad Guys Can Contact Your Customers
After hackers recently breached the UK-based Primary Care Electronic Library (PCEL) email database, they sent the following messages to those addresses contained within: Dear PCEL user, if you were ever once a patient of ours, we regret to inform you that the Primary Care Electronic Library is closed due to AIDS. Thank you for your attention." And worse.
You're Putting Your Customers' Other Accounts At Risk
Industry surveys have shown that time and time again, people reuse their usernames and passwords. A breach at your site could lead to your customer having their identity stolen elsewhere.
It May Give Hackers Leverage To Break Into Accounts
When hackers gain access to email addresses and passwords without any kind of detection, it won't take long before they're using that information to break into accounts in search of other PII that may have been provided on registration.
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