Who Has Been Hacked?
“It will never happen to me!” These words have often been spoken moments before a business owner’s site gets hacked – as if the hackers were listening in on their conversations. The fact that 20 WordPress sites get hacked every minute (1 hack every 3 seconds) should wake up most people to the fact that their website could get compromised if they aren’t protecting it with PCI compliant security scans and killer passwords.
Now people have moved from saying “No one ever gets hacked” to finally acknowledging that hacks happen – but now they insist that “Only big corporations get hacked.” That just isn’t true. There are hackers of all shapes and sizes. Some want the big guys, others are just getting started and begin with the little guys – the small e-commerce businesses – just to get their feet wet. After all, if you can’t shut down a few WordPress sites, what could you ever hope to accomplish as a hacker?
Think I’m joking? Go to Twitter, Google forums or LinkedIn and type in “Hack” and see how many normal, everyday people who own regular companies are currently talking about getting hacked. Or ask the thousands of websites and servers that have had their information vandalized over the last two years. From 2013 – 2015, some of the most notable hacks have been:
Experian ~ The huge credit rating bureau where more than 15 million records were accessed.
Anthem ~ The health care giant had 80 million customer records breached.
Ashley Madison ~ This dating site for married people was shocked to see the private information of 32 million customers posted online for all to see – especially their wives and husbands who didn’t know that their spouses were wanting to date someone else. 
US Government ~ This hack included 21.5 million accounts from background checks being shared without authorization and fingerprints being exposed.
Sony ~ Amy Pascal, co-chairman, resigned because of the embarrassment the hack caused the company.
Home Depot ~ 56 million payment cards and 53 million email addresses were copied before they could do anything to stop the hackers from stealing more information.
JP Morgan ~ They lost 83 million records from customers and business owners – talk about a blow to your reputation!
Ebay ~ Login credentials and physical addresses of more than 145 million users were taken from online shoppers.
This doesn’t include everyone, of course, like Target and Blue Cross/BlueShield. And it sure as heck doesn’t include the 20 WordPress sites getting hacked every minute (almost 30,000 a day)!
Trust Guard, the leader in website security recommends monitoring your site on a daily basis to keep it free from the more than 75,000 known vulnerabilities used by hackers to access your sites.
Need a free scan to see how you’re doing? Visit freepciscanning.com.
Thanks to Fortune.com for much of the information found in this article. To read their article, visit http://fortune.com/2015/10/02/heres-whos-been-hacked-in-the-past-two-years/
