Crying ‘Wolf!’ seems to work for security

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of supposed mega hacks garner big media attention. And why not? We’re talking about more than 1 billion people at risk — if these breaches had been real and current. But that’s not the case.

The strange thing is that I’m not really upset about this. Normally, I get incensed when I see the media get security stories wrong. But the greater good in the security business counts for something, and it just may be that these overhyped breach stories led a lot of people to take the simple steps they need to follow to increase the security of their accounts.

The latest mega hack story that was misrepresented was the compromise of 117 million LinkedIn accounts. You can find stories about it on just about every major news site. Stories were posted on Facebook accounts. Clearly this must have been a significant hack that people needed to know about.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here