Why in news?
Recently fast food chain giant McDonald asked its customers to update its app to prevent any unnecessary cyber security breaches.
What is the issue?
- It further said that the app doesn’t store sensitive financial information of its users, and that it is safe to use.
- The statement from the food chain giant came after a blog post by cyber security start-up Fallible, which had noted that the McDonald’s app is leaking personal data for more than 2.2 million of its users.
- The leakage includes name, email address, phone number, home address, accurate home co-ordinates and social profile links.
What are the reasons to worry?
- In India, there is a relative silence when it comes to public acceptance of cyber breaches by individual companies.
- India ranked fourth among countries most targeted for Web application attacks, in a report by content delivery network services provider.
- Juxtapose this with the fact that India has been adding millions of Internet users every year, along with the fast entry of Indian into the world of digital money.
- Fallible in an earlier post had called the security of Indian payments infrastructure ‘a joke’.
- It said that vulnerabilities in major payment gateways and wallets include multiple ways of data leak, monetary loss, private keys leak and more.
What is the way forward?
- Making breaches public should be mandatory and is the wake-up call company’s need.
- It would then become a customer-facing issue, and the management will be all ears.
- The more proactive ones will also realise that good cyber security can be good marketing.
Source: The Hindu
