9 Information Leaks You Haven't Heard Of

According to one of the legends, the captains of the ships entering the port of Alexandria were obliged to transfer all available books and manuscripts to the city library. In the library they were carefully studied, brought into the library book, copied and returned to the owners. This is how the largest data repository of antiquity, the Library of Alexandria, was formed. In a sense, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria can be considered the largest case of data loss.

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The ancient world did not differ much from the modern world in its attitude to information and knowledge. Then they were worth their weight in gold, and their loss was perceived as a tragedy. Today, we often hear about multi-million dollar losses for companies from leaks, thefts and failures; the heroes of Hollywood blockbusters are trying to steal various lists, flash drives and codes from the villains; and the thought that we will lose our records, photos and personal data gives us chills.

On the eve of World Backup Day, we decided to collect for you three fresh corporate scandals, blockbusters and celebrity cases that illustrate that data today is still worth its weight in gold and its loss is a real tragedy.

Corporate scandals

In August 2015, there was a real "case in a million". Lightning struck four times in a row at a Google data center in Belgium, resulting in a brief outage. The company's specialists noted that due to the failure that occurred, users could experience minor inconvenience when using Google services, but all problems were quickly resolved.

In mid-2015, the American insurer CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which provides health insurance services in the states of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, said that the data of 1.1 million former and current customers of the company were stolen by a group of hackers.

On June 19, 2015, the server of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University was attacked by hackers. The university's vice president of information technology, Ann Margulis, said that research data, personal data, and credit card data of students and employees were not stolen as a result of the attack. However, Harvard students and staff who were affected by the attack were still asked to change their passwords and update access to their accounts on the Harvard network on all devices.

Blockbusters

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

After the death of Darth Vader and the Emperor of the Galaxy Darth Sidious, peace and tranquility do not reign in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. The First Order, which comes to the place of the Empire, is looking for a flash drive with information about the whereabouts of the last Jedi - Luke Skywalker.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Iron Man - Tony Stark - and Professor Bruce Banner aka Hulk find in one of the stones of infinity, the greatest cosmic artifact, a "piece of code" for artificial intelligence and decide to include it in the source code of the Ultron peacekeeping program, which is supposed to protect the Earth from global threats . As often happens, artificial intelligence decides that the main threat to the Earth is people and something needs to be done about it.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

On one of their secret missions, Special Agent Ethan Hunt and his Mission Impossible squad face a new enemy - the Syndicate criminal group. In order to prove to their superiors that he exists, they must get to the biometric flash drive and swap it in order to gain access to the Syndicate's list of undercover agents.

Celebrity Cases

In April 2015, Metallica's lead guitarist Kirk Hammett admitted that work on the new album could slow down. The reason for this was the iPhone lost by Kirk, on which almost half of all the guitar parts recorded for the new album were stored in a single copy.

In July 2015, the popular rap artist Vasya Oblomov posted on his Twitter an entry: “Does anyone reading me know a way to recover files erased from a MacBook? Removed from Trash". It was not possible to restore data using Time Machine, and Vasily asked his fans for advice.

In September 2015, robbers broke into the mansion of singer Dima Bilan and stole a safe with a large sum of money, jewelry and hard drives with recordings of Bilan's performances.

This is just a fraction of the vast number of data loss cases that occurred in 2015. It's hard to even imagine how many times we have lost our photos and videos. A global study by Acronis, timed to coincide with World Backup Day, showed that 58% of respondents from Russia have experienced data loss at least once. Despite this, 32% of survey participants store backup data on the local hard drives of their computers and laptops, and only 5% use modern cloud backup services. It's time to use modern technology.