After initially investing $10M on prevention in 2017, the CRA is now having to augment spending as an internal breach has exposed records of over 41,000 Canadian tax payers. Thousands of Canadians had their personal and tax information compromised by CRA employees who were caught inappropriately accessing files. In total 264 workers were reprimanded, 182 faced disciplinary actions, 36 await a pending decision and 46 have left the organization.
With the internal breach occurring over a four year time span, critics and citizens are extremely disgruntled but we will all have to wait and see what comes of the breached data. Whether it appears on the Dark Web or is ultimately used in further cyber attacks are scenarios that cannot be predicted as of yet without knowing the true intentions of those who breached the system. Business should take note that threats can come from various places, even internally. User activity monitoring and data loss prevention can be helpful ways in which an organization can help to detect these types of scenarios and even prevent them from escalating over lengthy periods of time.