On average, the cost of a cyber attack in 2018 was $3.86 million, which is a tremendous amount … and it was only the average!? From new, emerging technologies to advanced security vulnerabilities … cyber-attacks are steadily growing more and more extreme than anything we’ve seen in the past. It’s true that no-one is “safe” and in actuality, no-one ever was.

As the Facebooks and Googles of the world continue to illustrate, companies rarely protect your privacy for you. Instead, they often do the opposite, selling your data to third-parties. And even seemingly harmless data can still tell data buyers a lot about you. 

One of the defining moments for tech in 2018 was on May 25, when the EU implemented its General Data Protection Regulation — the ominous GDPR.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will begin to apply these guidelines on January 1, 2019. The release of these guidelines is part of the Office’s work to improve the current consent model under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)

Despite the frequency of data breaches and their accompanying publicity, not many people actually understand the key concepts concerned with data storage, such as the difference between data privacy and data protection.

CEOs, Boards of Directors and Trustees are now realising how fatal cybersecurity failures can really be. In reality, a major data breach will ruin not only an organisation’s reputation, damage its brand and future prospects or plans, but also have serious consequences on the bottom line.

November 2018 – 251,286,753 records leaked

So far, this year’s round of scammers has been the most prolific, making 2018 an especially bad year for breaches.

For several years now, it has been a widely accepted truth that a green padlock in a website’s URL indicated that the site was secure; however, Krebs on Security reported that "Half of All Phishing Sites Now Have the Padlock."

GDPR is now six months old – it’s time to take an assessment of the regulation’s impact so far.