Insider Threat at Coca-Cola Compromises 8,000 Employees’ Information

McAfee

May 31, 2018

3 MIN READ

Cybercrime is often seen as a battle of good versus evil – a hacker tries to infiltrate a system while cyber defenders work hard to fend them off. Sometimes, data breaches are the work of these cybercriminals, and other times they’re caused by an actual employee of the affected company – something we like to call an insider threat. Just this past week, popular soft drink producer Coca-Cola announced that they were facing exactly that: an insider threat in the form of a former employee found carrying a personal hard drive of worker data.

So far, we know that this employee uploaded the data of their fellow coworkers onto an external hard drive, which they took with them when departing the company. According to a company representative, “the type of stolen and exposed data varies per employee.” And though there are no more known specifics around the data, we do know that this theft impacts 8,000 individual Coca-Cola employees.

As of now, Coca-Cola says it’s been working with law enforcement to dig into the details of this insider threat, but in the interim, these employees need to start taking proactive steps to protect their personal information. In order to do just that, follow these basic security tips:

Set up an alert. If you know there’s a chance your personal data has been compromised, place a fraud alert on your credit so that any new or recent requests undergo scrutiny. This also entitles you to extra copies of your credit report, so you can check for anything suspicious. If you find an account you did not open, report it to the police or Federal Trade Commission, as well as the creditor involved so you can close the fraudulent account.
Freeze your credit. This allows you to seal your credit reports so no one else can take out new accounts or loans in your name. You can do this without impacting your existing lines of credit, such as credit cards. If you want to apply for services or open new accounts, you can temporarily “unfreeze” your credit using a personal identification code only you have.`
Consider an identity theft protection solution. With their personal information floating around, these employees could be faced with the possibility of identity theft. McAfee Identity Theft Protection allows users to take a proactive approach to protecting their identities with personal and financial monitoring and recovery tools to help keep their identities personal and secured.

And, of course, to stay on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, be sure to follow me and @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable? and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.