Until the massive U.S. Target store credit and debit card data breach in 2013, the lasting impact of cybercrimes was a relatively unknown experience to most consumers, and it wasn’t on the top list of HR onboarding topics either.

To combat the problem, the IRS updated its computer files to identify more fraudulent returns, and the major tax preparers have increased their security. However, as individuals’ tax returns are becoming more difficult to manipulate, thieves are taking aim at data belonging to tax return preparers and tax professionals, the payroll community, small employers and human resource departments.

A recent survey by Rapid 7 found that security professionals are struggling to detect and investigate incidents because the monitoring solutions available do not provide visibility into today’s modern IT environments and cannot give users the insight they need to make decisions quickly.
 

For a long time now, people (employees, users) have been touted as ‘the weakest link’ because of the tendency to make mistakes or try to bypass cumbersome processes, with no malicious or criminal intent in mind,” says Anthony Lim, Senior Cybersecurity Advisor, Asia Pacific, for Frost & Sullivan and Vice-Chair for (ISC)2 Application Security Advisor Council.

Facing increasingly sophisticated and hostile cyber security threats, UC Berkeley is doubling its cyber security budget and working closely with other University of California campuses to address security risks.