Recent revelations show cybersecurity issues continue to plaguefinancial institutions, businesses and consumers with the biggestpotential breach possibly affecting some 550,000 to onemillion California auto loan company customers.

Kromtech Security Researchers discovered vulnerable data, whichmight have been unprotected for up to two years. Files purportedlybelonging to a California auto loan company, Alliance DirectLending, which works with individuals and auto dealership partnersto help car owners refinance, exposed customer informationincluding names, addresses, zip codes, the last fourSocial-Security digits, credit scores on an unsecure onlinedatabase.

“We discovered this after noticing a few exposed (Amazon server)buckets. Technically, anybody could have guessed the name and putthat into a URL line,” Bob Diachenko, Kromtech's securitycommunications specialist, said.

The leaked data contained 124 files with each containing from5,000 to 10,000 records, as well as the names of 114 cardealerships located across the country including California,Colorado, Florida and Massachusetts.

Information privacy, security and compliance consultant RebeccaHerold, president of the Des Moines, Iowa-based SIMBUS and CEO ofThe Privacy Professor, said leaks like this are particularlyproblematic because loan refinance businesses are often associatedwith credit unions. In addition, many credit unions use managedservice providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google CloudPlatform and Microsoft Azure. “Just because they have acertification or are large doesn't mean they don't need oversight,”Herold said.

Herold also suggested that leaked data could fall in fraudsters'hands and lead to phishing, scamming and identity fraud. “This hasimplications for what every type of financial company needs tothink about whenever they are putting data on a Web server. Theyneed to ensure whoever is hosting has good security controls inplace.”

An additional recent discovery was by San Francisco-based,RiskIQ, which reported an eight-fold increase in internet scamsthat deny the $83 billion digital advertising industry millions ofdollars. RiskIQ identified NoTrove, a major threat actor thatdelivers millions of scam ads.

The ad scams work by serving up attractive but disingenuous adson legitimate websites offering things like offer bogus surveys orfree software upgrades. When clicked, the ad re-directs traffictoward various locations across the internet.

Because web traffic is an essential commodity, ad scammers likeNoTrove profit from this demand, participating in traffic affiliateprograms or selling to traffic buyers. Ad scammers can alsodownload potentially unwanted programs and increase the likelihoodconsumers will implement ad blockers as a way to avoid bogusads.

“NoTrove harms not only visiting users, but also legitimateadvertisers, adversely affecting those reliant on the credibilityof the digital advertising ecosystem, such as online retailers,publishers and networks,” William MacArthur, a threat researcher atRiskIQ, said.

The third recent disclosure involved the restaurant chainChipotle, which revealed to customers, via its website, it recentlydiscovered unauthorized activity on its payment processing network.There was no specific detail other than the investigation isongoing and focused on card transactions from March 24, 2017through April 18, 2017.

Chipotle is just the latest in a string of restaurant industry breaches, which includesWendy's, Arby's and Shoney's.

John Christly, Global CISO, Netsurion, a provider of managedsecurity services, and EventTracker, a SIEM provider, provided thetop five virtual attacks against restaurant brands andfranchisees:

1. Hackers: They target restaurants due to theabundance of poorly secured systems. Once they find vulnerabilityand get into the network they go after the POS systems.
2. POS malware: Sometimes malware discreetlyslips by antivirus programs and stealthily extracts payment data,despite the presence of traditional firewalls.
3. Ransomware: Prevents users from accessingtheir system unless scammers receive a payoff in exchange of adecryption key. Ransomware attacks are on the rise and there is noend in sight.
4. Inside threats: Whether it's an honest mistakeor a disgruntled employee, inside threats account for about 50% ofall security incidents.
5. Wi-Fi security: Securing Wi-Fi with firewallsand ensuring cellular backup from downtime protects cash flow, aswell as restaurant and patron security. Having separate Wi-Fiaccess points for patrons versus the POS and business network iscrucial.