MBS Secures and Reconfigures Problematic Database After 258 Million Records Leaked

There has been another quite large breach in recent days. Unfortunately, you may not even know you were a victim. This one is of data management company Modern Business Systems (MBS).  What is known is that at least 58 million records were stolen and the data included full names, IP addresses, addresses, some vehicle information, occupations, birth dates, and email addresses. And the 58 million is likely much lower than the reality. An update to that said that 258 million rows of personal data were leaked.

Unfortunately, unlike if your credit card information was stolen in a large breach, such as it was for Home Depot, or if your healthcare data or email address was accessed, such as in the Anthem breach and Yahoo incident, respectively, it’s unknown at this point whose data this belongs to. That’s because MBS helps its clients “build their revenue streams by providing content and services” to various industries including employment verticals and the automotive industry. It also provides cloud-based data management services. So, while they may eventually be able to notify their clients, which are companies, from a personal level victims may have no idea their information was included in this breach.

However, you can take the same precautions you would normally. Get a copy of your credit report from one of the three major bureaus every four months and keep an eye out for anything that should not be on them. Report anomalies right away.

In addition, always pay attention to your payment card charges at least monthly. If something is unfamiliar, hunt down the charge. If it’s not yours, let the card issuer know immediately to remedy it. It will cost you and the financial institution much less if you deal with it sooner. 

So far this year, there have been 2.2 billion records exposed in nearly 3,000 disclosed data breaches. However, for some consolation, it is estimated that 10,000 or less records were in exposed in the majority of them.  In this breach, the database has since been secured, but not before significant damage may have happened.