Farmers Insurance harvests bad news: 1.1M customers snared in data breach

US insurance giant Farmers Insurance says more than a million customers had personal data nicked after a third-party vendor was compromised. The insurer, which sells car, home, life, and business cover to more than 10 million Americans, briefly published an advisory on its website confirming the breach before quietly pulling …

[VoiceOfTruth]

Just imagine if this was the old days

When files existed on paper only. Unless the data-thieves had trucks lining up, they might be able to snaffle a couple of hands full of files.

"Computer security" is not a valid collocation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just imagine if this was the old days

Or use a match.

[ecofeco]

3rd party systems?

Better known as, the cloud, a.k.a. some one else's computer.

[MachDiamond]

Kudos El Reg

With all of the articles being posted here the large, very notable ones, many more are going to go unreported. There has to be more punishment for companies storing and not adequately securing data that goes beyond providing some period of credit monitoring. Substantial punishments may get companies to consider whether storing data is worthwhile or not. With so little downside and the possibility of the data being a profit center, keeping it is an easy decision.

What I don't see being featured in new reports are exploits of high-value Db's. A bunch of files on people's required auto insurance is not as juicy as, say, Bently's much smaller file of US customers and all of the data that have amassed about those people "for marketing purposes". Of course, if the Farmer's breach shows the values of yachts of that class of insured, that's going to be a list of wealthy people since an expensive yacht is all swank and often a step beyond owning a hypercar or two, a fancy vacation home and a Platinum NetJets subscription.

If I were a scammer looking to leverage data breaches to target people, I'd want to narrow my aim down to the ones with the deepest pockets. John Q. Public might be so overextended that there's no extracting any whey from that rock. Many are in that position.