The source document comes from a company hosted at www.glasswasherparts.com. The platform provider of this site experienced a data breach affecting the span of February to December 2016. As a result, the names, addresses, phone numbers, and payment card information of users who stored that information on the site within that date range was compromised.
Regarding the Social Sciences, the Economics of this incident is highlighted well. The company was using a 3rd-party platform provider. This illustrates the delegation of security responsibility to the entity hosting the website, as the business may have found it more cost-efficient to do so. Criminology is also meaningful, as we could ask what made the platform provider a target and what was the response. They held Personally Identifiable Information (PII) for their customer and their existing practices allowed for the exploitation of this data. The criminal in this circumstance only needs to be right once. The company’s response was to hire a cybersecurity firm to remove malware from their systems and send out a letter to those prospectively affected.
For further investigation, Economic Theories may provide context clues as to how this took place or ways to prevent the incidents from happening. Laissez-fare Economic Theory states a belief that government should not interfere in the economy except to protect individuals’ rights and it is based on ideals of supply and demand. Governments are meant to reflect the ideals of their constituents. The voting base probably would not mind tighter regulation about how their PII is hosted, kept secure, and monetized. Keynesian Economic Theory wants government investments and low taxes for economic stimulation. As this relates to cybersecurity, governments’ increase in cybersecurity initiatives may lead to initiatives in cybersecurity for better security practices. Tax incentives may allow businesses to develop better security practices.
Source:
https://dojmt.gov/wp-content/uploads/Glasswasherparts.com_.pdf