With the news that Holiday camp provider Butlins – famous for Red coats and the catchphrase “Hi-de-Hi” has been hacked and 34,000 guest records have been stolen is cause for alarm.
It seems that every week another company falls victim to a data breach of hack.
My view is that no company can protect against this threat while the humble employee is the last mile of defence against hacking.
From the reports about the Butlins hack, it seems that it may have been a phishing attack that allowed the breach to occur, this means that some form of social engineering was used to trick an employee into sharing credentials for Butlin’s IT systems with them.
Butlins says that the data which may have been accessed includes booking reference numbers, lead guest names, holiday arrival dates, postal and email addresses and telephone numbers.
You can no longer consider IF you will be hacked, you must prepare for a time when you will be hacked. Just as we have fire drills, and disaster recovery exercises, in this digital age we now must prepare for digital disasters, the likes of which have impacted Butlins.
One simple thing you can do is to deliver cyber security awareness training to staff. In the 2 minute video below I outline how 2-factor authentication (also called 2FA) is a simple yet effective way to keep your data safe. Employees need to be encouraged to turn on 2FA on all their personal accounts to help you protect your corporate accounts. Watch the video to understand why.
How are you preventing a Butlins-style hack to bring down your company?