Have you ever wondered how a hacker knows exactly who to call at your company to bypass security? It is not a lucky guess. Cybercriminals are increasingly using data brokers to harvest personal details of your employees, turning your staff into backdoors to your corporate network.
Data brokers are companies that collect personal information about you from public records, online purchases, social media activity, and other sources. While this might seem like a consumer privacy issue, for a business owner, it is a massive security vulnerability.
The Social Engineering Threat: From Profiles to Breaches
When a criminal can purchase an employee’s home address, phone number, and even their work history for a few dollars, they no longer need to “hack” your firewall. Instead, they use social engineering. By impersonating a staff member or an IT administrator, they can trick your help desk into resetting passwords or granting administrative access.
Recent high profile incidents have shown exactly how dangerous this information can be:
- The MGM Resorts Attack: In 2023, the group known as Scattered Spider used information found online to identify an employee and impersonate them during a ten minute call to the IT help desk. This single point of failure led to a ransomware attack that cost the company estimated millions in daily revenue.
- The Caesars Entertainment Breach: Similar tactics were used to target a third-party IT vendor at Caesars. By leveraging personal data, attackers successfully manipulated the human element of the security chain, ultimately resulting in a multi-million dollar ransom payment.
These attacks prove that data brokers provide the blueprints for modern cybercrime. When your employees’ private lives are public, your corporate security is compromised.
Why Data Removal Is a Business Necessity
Protecting your perimeter with firewalls and antivirus software is only half the battle. If you are not managing the public availability of your team’s information, you are leaving the door unlocked. Data removal is now a critical component of a proactive cybersecurity strategy.
By implementing a systematic data removal process, you shrink the “attack surface” available to hackers. However, doing this manually is impossible for a growing company. Data brokers often ignore individual requests or recreate profiles weeks after they are deleted.
Secure Your Team with PC Matic Delist
PC Matic Delist helps automate the data removal process by identifying where your personal information appears across major data brokers and people search sites, then submitting removal requests on your behalf. Ongoing monitoring helps reduce your online exposure and keeps your personal details out of easy reach.
Choose Your Defense Level
We offer two tailored solutions to help your business regain control over its digital footprint:
Stop waiting for a social engineering attack to happen. Start preventing it by taking your data off the market.
