Post-pandemic world reels from surge in cyberattacks; here's how to be safe

Take a look some of the biggest data breaches of 2022 and how you can protect yourself

Covid-19's lasting effects are not limited to health and the economy. The post-pandemic world is also reeling from a surge in cyberattacks and data breaches.
 

Cyberattacks in India have tripled in the last three years. A recent report showed that government bodies in India suffered the highest number of cyberattacks, at 82 in 2022. The number was up eightfold over the previous year.
 

"Post-pandemic, lots of businesses have digitised, and there is increased use of technology. But security has not been thought about," said Kanishk Gaur, a cybersecurity expert.

"People are not behind corporate firewalls since they are working remotely," he added. "Security has not been a part of the design." As a result, systems remain vulnerable," Gaur explained to Business Standard.

Here are a few of the biggest data breaches of 2022

 1. WhatsApp data leak

In one of the biggest data breaches ever, WhatsApp data of nearly half a billion users from 84 countries worldwide, including India, was breached and put up for sale online, according to a report by Cybernews.

2. Twitter hack

As Elon Musk went gaga over transforming Twitter, at least 5.4 million Twitter user records were stolen via an internal bug and leaked online on a hacker forum.

3. AIIMS cyberattack

India's top medical institute, AIIMS, came to a near-halt in November after a massive cyber attack derailed everyday work, appointments and registration, billing, and lab reports. The attack corrupted files and data on the main and backup servers of the hospital. According to reports, the data of millions of patients, including bureaucrats and politicians, was affected.

4. Indian Railway data breach

A hacker sold the personal information of nearly 30 million railway passengers on the dark web. These details included the name, email, phone number, gender, and other personal information of several government officials and notable personalities, among others, the hacker claimed.

5. Financial data of over 9 million cardholders leaked

Cybersecurity researchers said in October they discovered a massive leak involving over nine million cardholders' financial data, including customers of the State Bank of India.

What can you do to protect yourself?

As an end user, it's important that you change your user IDs and passwords frequently. "It's important that you change your passwords once every 15 days," according to Gaur.

Users should also build layers of security. For example, users can enable multi-factor authentication on WhatsApp, which safeguards their data.

Another thing Gaur suggests is that if you have WhatsApp running on multiple accounts, log out of other accounts when you're not using them.

Biometric authentication is another way to add an extra security layer.