Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific airlines recently experienced a data breach that allowed a hacker unauthorized access of personal data to 9.4 million passengers. According to cyber experts who are working closely with this incident report that the details provided by Cathay Pacific think the magnitude of the attack might be in result of the company shifting from legacy systems to cloud based systems.
In the process of transitioning to the cloud, the airlines company decided to cut some senior IT executives which analysts believe could have affected the outcome of some of the security protocols needed to ensure the front end customer facing apps were installed correctly. They suggest there could have been poor programming as well as lack of security patch installed in a timely manner. With most of airlines becoming more cloud and internet based (i.e. internet in-flight entertainment), security experts strongly suggest that airlines need to ramp up their security protocols as they have a greater chance of getting hacked.
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