Snapchat Report Highlights Insider Threats as Top Challenge for Privacy; Employee Mistakes Named Top Data Security Threat in Hong Kong and Taiwan

Snapchat Privacy Blunder Piques Concerns About Insider Threats

Following a report that employees at Snap – the company behind the popular Snapchat social media app – were abusing their access to Snapchat data, experts are warning that insider threats will continue to be a top challenge for privacy. The company has found itself in hot water after it was revealed that Snap employees were abusing their access to private user data – which includes location data, saved Snaps and phone numbers.

The report raises several important questions about data privacy. More specifically, it has raised questions about what types of restrictions Snap places on employee access to data and how it keeps track of that access. While it may be inevitable that employees of companies have access to floods of data, companies face a serious challenge in preventing their own employees from abusing these privileges.

Google Stored Unhashed G Suite Passwords for Years

Google is notifying G Suite enterprise users and administrators this week that the company had inadvertently stored passwords in an unhashed, but still encrypted, state for several years because of a flaw in the platform’s administration console.

Google does not believe that any user data was stolen during this time. The company plans to monitor security audits over the next several months to ensure that no data was compromised, according to the blog post published Tuesday. Google did not specify how many user accounts and passwords were affected.

Employee mistakes top threat to data security in HK and Taiwan

Employee mistakes are considered the biggest data security threat among organizations in Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to research from the Ponemon Institute.

The Institute’s 2019 Hong Kong and Taiwan Encryption Trends Study found that employee mistakes were considered the top security threat by 48% of organizations in the two market, more than external hackers (22%) and malicious insiders (17%) combined.

With 80% of respondents in Hong Kong and Taiwan using cloud services or planning to adopt them within 12-24 months, almost all (91%) want encryption solutions that operate across both enterprise and cloud environments – 23% more than the global average.