Every day there are more data breaches around the world that end up costing companies and consumers a small, and in some cases large, fortune. Technology is evolving daily and business managers are being forced to stay abreast of all the latest threats and changes on a constant basis. The United Parcel Service (UPS) is the latest international company to incur a data breach. A report in the Hill said that customers who used certain UPS offices between January 20 and August 11 may have been affected by the breach.
A small percentage of stores affected
UPS operates 4470 stores nationwide and the breaches occurred at 51 of their franchised facilities the company said they have deployed more security teams to investigate the hack. Tim Davis is the president of The UPS Store and said they moved quickly after receiving a government tip.
"As soon as we became aware of the potential malware intrusion, we deployed extensive resources to quickly address and eliminate this issue," Davis said in a statement. "Our customers can be assured that we have identified and fully contained the incident," he continued. "At The UPS Store the trust of our customers is of utmost importance."
Data center operators remain focused
The Ponemon Institute has said repeatedly that the average cost to a company of a data incursion and outage is more than $690,000 per incident in 2011 numbers . However, a recent survey indicated that most data center breaches come from insider accidents or malfeasance and the average incident cost has skyrocketed to $3.5 million. Protecting the company against hacks and data center incursions is a major focus of executives and an area of many resource expenditures.
Cutting-edge technology helps
While traditional passcard and key technologies are still being employed by many businesses, there's a unique and revolutionary way to protect and lock-down the data center in a relatively cost-efficient fashion. Biometric security uses a person's unique identifier, their fingerprints, to create a template in the company data base. When that employee wants to enter a secured area, they place their finger on a fingerprint reader. Once the print is scanned and it matches the one in the data base, the employee is allowed access to the facility. Because fingerprints are non-duplicable, security personnel have an almost foolproof way to keep solid access control over their facility and it's not only businesses in the United States that are utilizing this amazing software.
Central and South America coming onboard
A recent Research and Markets report showed that the Latin America biometric market will grow by upwards of 23 percent between now and 2018. A Nearshore Americas story said economic fraud and growing terror threats have sparked the increase. In fact, the article noted, Mexico has recently begun deploying fingerprint scanning technology as a means of targeting crime syndicates operating in that nation-state. The story also noted that in Argentina and Brazil in South America, biometric technology has been implemented to counter some of the banking and pensions fraud rocking those two countries.
The Research and Markets study reported that governments are investing in biometrics on a continuous basis to upgrade their facilities and protect and enhance security protocols and infrastructure just like their colleagues in the U.S.
As most of the western hemisphere continues to explore and deploy biometric security to safeguard their physical property industry software developers continue to work on new platforms to stay ahead of criminals who have mischief of worse on their minds.
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