Data breaches have become all too common in the business world lately, and a major pet supply chain became the most recent victim.
A laptop stolen from an auditor contained the sensitive data for a large number of the pet store chain's employees, including their names and Social Security numbers, according to a report from
Storefront Backtalk. However, the breach did not involve any sensitive customer data or credit card information.
For its part, the store says the laptops were protected with passwords, and the sensitive data potentially exposed was kept in a software program protected with an encrypted password of its own, the report said. It was also incredibly likely that the thieves in question were only stealing the laptop for its market value, not to harvest the data contained on it.
Ondrej Krehel, the chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, writes regularly on his official blog about the many ways in which data breaches can affect consumers whose personal information is exposed in them, and what can be done to increase their protection.
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