Secured User Identities Protect Against Data Breaches
News headlines show rising panic over frequent data breaches. It feels like there are new data breaches arising each week. The credit reporting agency TransUnion recently reported that the hacker group ‘N4aughtysecTU’ had breached their servers by using the login credentials of an authorized client.
The hacker group has aggregated data, including data of 54 million people from a previous data breach in 2017, unrelated to the latest incident. The hacker group demanded a $15 million ransom over four terabytes of compromised data. The group claims the data in its possessions contains everything from credit scores to banking details and identity numbers.
Massive multinational corporations are not immune from data breaches. Reporting from Bloomberg revealed that Apple and Meta provided customer data to hackers who faked emergency data request orders typically sent by law enforcement. The breach happened in mid-2021, with both companies falling for fake requests and providing information about users’ IP addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses. The same type of hack also targeted Snapchat and Discord.
The dangers of monolithic digital security
There’s no doubt that a large number of data breaches result from large companies’ negligence. Their monolithic size and the outsourcing of cybersecurity to equally monolithic companies combine to create a high level of risk.
The rate at which data breaches occur suggests that existing security measures fail. Large companies fail to invest in resilient data protection mechanisms or fail to conduct due diligence to verify the source of data requests.
For companies, the consequences are severe and increasing. The growing threat of data breaches has increased the regulatory burden and heightened financial penalties. In addition, data breaches can severely affect a company’s reputation and business situation. Take the example of Yahoo. Their sale to Verizon was delayed in 2017 following two massive security breaches affecting more than one billion users.
For the consumer whose data is leaked, the potential dangers are innumerable. Data breaches open up consumers to numerous identity threats that could ruin them financially. For example, a widespread exploit in the USA is gaining access to a phone number and porting it to a new number. We have so many data and verification methods in our phone numbers and email addresses. Losing access to your phone number can be devastating. Even more so, if you own crypto assets, you could potentially lose millions of dollars in a single transaction.
Protect your customers by securing your digital identity
Provided there is widespread uptake, digital identity can play a vital role in protecting consumers from the wide-reaching consequences of a data breach.
Through PhotoChromic’s unique identity management solution, you can verify the identity of parties to a transaction on demand. The NFT serves as proof of liveness — you can confirm that you’re transacting with a real person and not a spoof account. You can extend a secure identity to other parties in transactions while maintaining control over personal data.
Protect yourself and your consumers from data breaches. Explore the future of secure digital identity with PhotoChromic.
About PhotoChromic
PhotoChromic introduces a unique use case for non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) by integrating them with user identity, to develop a biometrically managed model of Self-Sovereign Identity (“SSI”) on the Blockchain. Using NFTs, PhotoChromic aims to make identity programmable, verifiable, universally addressable, and digitally secured.
Powered by an ERC-20 token, $PHCR, running on the Ethereum blockchain, PhotoChromic addresses the current challenges faced by people the world over, as they pursue ownership over, and the ability to secure, their identity. PhotoChromic gives control and ownership of user identity back to the individual, where it belongs.
Learn more about PhotoChromic at:
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