Data Breaches Can Hit Anyone, Anywhere

Winslow, Maine is not the first spot you'd think a hacker would look to swipe credit card data, but that's exactly what happened recently.

According to a report in the Kennebec Journal, approximately 11,500 customer records were hacked from the website of Johnny's Selected Seeds. Already, at least 20 fraudulent incidents have been reported using the hacked data.

Two interesting things in this story. One, the hackers actually hacked the internal servers of the company's offices in Winslow to gain appropriate access rights to infiltrate the company's web servers, which are hosted in Kentucky. The site had hacker-safe software installed, which was of no consequence in this case, because the perpetrators had a acquired appropriate credentials.

The second item of interest is that Johnny's Selected Seeds is neither an overly large on-line retailer, nor are they located anywhere where you'd expect them to be a target.

This is a strong reminder that protecting data is not just a problem for big name companies like TJX or any of the other well-publicized breaches. Whether you fall under a compliance regulation requiring data protection or not, your data is vulnerable and somebody wants it.

Even if you're in Winslow, Maine.