With Clarity Against ID Theft: New Assessment Tool Aims to Limit Post-Breach Damage
by Robert McGarvey
Breach Clarity, a startup headed up by onetime Javelin Strategy + Research co-founder Jim Van Dyke, could help cybersecurity journalists, bloggers, and PR professionals write more clearly about data breaches.
Breaches are commonplace. There are four significant ones per day, says Van Dyke.
They often affect financial information, such as bank account or credit card data, protected health records, personally identifiable information (PII), or intellectual property.
In 2020, the total number of records exposed in reported breaches exceeded 37 billion, a 141% increase over 2019. This number doesn’t even include yet 2020 data breaches reported in Q1 2021.
But what does that mean for individual consumers and their personal data in each case? “The biggest challenge breach victims face,” says Eva Velasquez, CEO of the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), “is understanding the risks associated with a particular breach, and what steps they should take next.”
Data breach press releases from lawyers, for lawyers
Ask any cybersecurity journalist what they do not like about data breach press releases of, say, financial services firms or health care providers, and the answer is: everything.