Well, that didn’t take long. On Wednesday February 19th ZDNet.com reported that MGM had a “security incident” last summer. On Friday February 21st Morgan & Morgan announced that they were filing a lawsuit against MGM for “complaint for damages” and “injunctive relief”. If that is not a world record, it has to be close!
10.6 Million Users Including Justin Bieber
At 10.6 million users, the MGM breach is relatively small when compared to Marriot’s massive 500 million user breach. However, the star power of this breach shines quite a bit brighter. Some of the names included in the breached database include:
- Justin Bieber
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
- Department of Homeland Security Officials
- TSA Officials.
Kept Under Wraps till Now
MGM Resorts managed to keep the size and scope of this breach under wraps until ZDNet and a security researcher from Under the Breach published their post last week. While MGM has stated that they contacted the affected guests after they confirmed the unauthorized access to a cloud server last summer, according to an article on the Morgan & Morgan website “only about 1,300 former guests were notified that their passport numbers were exposed, and about 52,000 more were told about the leaks of the less sensitive information, according to news reports.”
“Last summer, we discovered unauthorized access to a cloud server that contained a limited amount of information for certain previous guests of MGM Resorts,”
“We are confident that no financial, payment card or password data was involved in this matter.” – MGM Spokesperson
The Costs of Breaches Continue to Rise
Loss of operational efficiency, brand damage and lawsuits are just a few of the costs that have data breach costs trending higher as shown in the data below from Security Intelligence. Of course these are global averages and US organizations and specific fields such as healthcare are experiencing significantly higher costs. The average total cost of a data breach in the U.S. is up to $8.19 million, more than twice the global average while healthcare tops the charts again was again with the total cost of a data breach in 2019 averaging $6.45 million.
Konsultek is Here to Help
Sure, the numbers are scary but we’re here to help. Just pick up the phone and give us a call. We’re always ready to learn more about you and your organization and to apply some of the best diagnostic tools in the world to help you determine just how at risk your data and network might be.