The recent attack on Adobe, which saw approximately 38 million customer accounts breached, demonstrates that despite the growing threat of cyber attacks, a lacklustre approach to IT security is still exhibited by many organisations regardless of their size or reputation, states Simon Bain, founder and CTO of Simplexo.

In early October, Adobe announced that 2.9 million customers had had private information stolen during a cyber attack on its website. It has since been confirmed that this figure was in fact 38 million.

Bain says that Adobe seriously failed its customers in light of this attack and this should therefore serve as a warning to everyone of the importance of ensuring that data remains protected and encrypted:

“It is thought that at least 38 million customer details were stolen from Adobe’s database – for perspective that is roughly half the population of the UK. That is an astronomical figure and for a company of Adobe’s size and stature they should hang their heads in shame at such a loss.

“This should serve as a huge warning to all organisations - every week there are more and more database attacks. Firms need to understand that hacking will always be with us. It is not something that we can stop.

“In light of major hacks, one of the biggest causes for concern is the number of organisations allowing un-encrypted data to be held in their database – this is unforgivable. People’s private information should be just that. Private.

“Data is the lifeblood for any organisation and if it is lost or misused, it can have devastating effects. It is therefore essential that organisations wake up to the threats posed by cyber criminals and establish measures that ensure data stored across any database is encrypted.

“For organisations looking to take this step and address the issue of encryption, it is important to understand that there is software available that allows users to carry out a full-text search for all desktop files and encrypted documents, all while providing concurrent access to structured and unstructured information in an ultra-secure manner,” concluded Bain.