Potential CiCi's Breach Serves as Reminder to Implement Good Security Practices

Incidents at a popular food chain illustrate how important it is to follow good cyber security practices at the office. The pizza place, CiCi’s Pizza has been the subject of recent security news due to an ongoing investigation into a possible intrusion. Being blamed is access granted to criminals using social engineering tactics to a store’s point-of-sale system.

While more information is being gathered and whether or not there was a breach is still to be determined, it is suspected that access was granted to someone pretending to be a member of a  technical support team. Either they were given this access after appearing in person or they used Teamviewer software to log in remotely using stolen credentials. It is suspected that a re-used password was involved, if this is the case.

And where did they get the re-used password? It is suspect to be from earlier breaches at LinkedIn, MySpace, and/or Tumblr. All of these breaches were recently announced, yet happened in the past and were just not announced. And altogether, they account for over 650 million stolen credentials.

For those responsible for network security, it is worth the effort to take extra precautions to secure your systems. To do this, keep a few things in mind:

Always be aware of any time support is to be done on any of your systems. Vendors should always communicate such schedules to you. If someone shows up unexpectedly saying technical support is needed on your system, turn him away or verify with your vendor directly. This is one way the breach at CiCi’s may have occurred, if it did.

In addition, make sure all passwords; especially administrator passwords are not used on any other system or for any other accounts. All passwords should be unique to each account and user. This applies to the users you support and it’s often worthwhile to remind the users of this.

Passwords should always be kept private and never shared with anyone. If someone asks for your password, decline to provide it and find another way to get assistance.

Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) with vendors. This could be done using special codes that are sent via text or email that must be entered before account access or assistance is given. It could be a word or phrase that needs to be provided to a support person before assistance is given. Take advantage of whatever MFA is available.

It may not be known any time soon how or if an intrusion did take place at CiCi’s. However, it’s a good reminder to maintain solid security practices. After all, you don’t want to be the one having to defend yourself to the media, executive management, or the Board of Directors because of a breach that could have been prevented.