
Ashford Inc, a hotel asset manager with earnings of roughly $750 million in 2023 (the company has since gone private) is settling with the SEC for failing to disclose (accurately or at all) the extent of a breach it suffered involving 12 terabytes of data.
12 terabytes of data.
For those playing the home game, that is roughly 9.6 million books, or 2.4 millions songs worth of storage....just so we are clear. If your phone storage is easier to conceptualize then that's roughly 2.5 million pictures..... it is a LOT of data.
The issue is the company failed to admit that the breach impacted customers for nearly a year. If you read the article they basically gently disclosed that they had a cyber incident, but did not detail impact. Then they said maybe employees information was impacted, and then finally nearly a year later they updated their disclosure after admitting specifically to, nothing.
I wanted to briefly highlight this story today for a simple reason. Your personal information is stored ALL OVER the place. Companies, schools, subscriptions, pharmacies, payroll software, the US Government....and almost no one is doing what I would call a stellar job at protecting that information. Worse than that (as we see here) when there is a problem you are often not notified in a timely manner and that is CRAP.
However, today we will not get into reform discussions. Today I simply want you to consider the responsibility you have for your own safety. Make sure you are monitoring your Identity professionally, ensure you have password management and dark web monitoring for your family (especially children and elderly). Freeze your credit and your children's credit (and recommend the same to anyone you care about).
It is a wild world out there folks. Lets slow down and take accountability for ourselves.