Late last month, Brendan Iribe, Co-Founder and CEO of $2 billion Facebook-acquired virtual reality provider Oculus VR LLC, shocked the tech world by announcing his own replacement as leader of the gaming company. The announcement, published on his personal Twitter account, came as a complete surprise to Oculus employees and directors. He had named an unknown Twitter user as his successor. The response from the “new CEO” didn’t inspire confidence.
That’s because Iribe’s Twitter account was hacked. And he isn’t the only high-flying tech executive to have his account hacked: Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick have all seen their public social accounts hacked in recent months. Celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Sarah Silverman, politicians including Hillary Clinton and Congressman John Lewis, and athletes including Kevin Durant and Jameis Winston have all been hacked.
The security breaches aren’t limited to individuals. In 2015, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield exposed the names, birthdays, addresses, social security numbers, and other private personal and medical information for 80 million clients. In 2014, Staples exposed their payment system and compromised 1.2 million customer credit card accounts. Even our military’s US Central Command accounts were hacked by a group sympathetic to ISIS.
Despite the bleak picture painted by these examples, there are actions you can take and practices you can maintain to protect yourself and your company from being hacked. Following these three steps will protect your business and personal accounts from hackers: