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Commenting on this, Mike Spykerman, VP at OPSWAT, said: "The reality is that data breaches are no longer a question of if, but when. At least some of the information at Carphone Warehouse was encrypted, but still a lot of personal data was not. Data breaches often start with a spear phishing attack that evades detection from regular spam filters and single anti-virus engines. By using multiple anti-virus engines, the possibility that a spear phishing attack is detected is considerably higher. To avoid cyber attacks being successful, companies should prepare their defences by deploying several cyber security layers including device monitoring and management, scanning with multiple anti-malware engines, and advanced threat protection."

Mark Bower, Global Director at HP Security Voltage:

"It’s a clear signal that contemporary data encryption and tokenization for all sensitive fields, not disk or column level encryption for credit cards, is necessary to thwart advanced attacks that scrape sensitive data from memory, data is use, as well as storage and transmission. Disk encryption protects data at rest, but it’s an all or nothing approach that leaves exploitable gaps: applications needing data have to decrypt it every time. Yet advanced attacks steal data in use and in motion. Another problem is that, while firms may focus on credit card data to meet basic PCI compliance, attackers will steal any sensitive data like account data, contact information and so on as they can repurpose it for theft. There are effective defences to this. Today’s new-breed of encryption and tokenization techniques can render data itself useless to attackers, yet functional to business needs. This technology, such as Format-Preserving Encryption, is proven in leading banks, retailers and payment processors who are constantly bombarded and probed by attackers. By securing customer and card data from capture over the data’s journey through stores, branches, databases and analytic systems, businesses can avoid unnecessary decryption required by older generation disk or database encryption techniques. Data can stay protected in use, at rest, and in motion, and stays secure even if stolen. Modern vetted and peer reviewed data encryption is infeasible to break on any realistic basis. Its a win-win for business, as it can be retrofitted to existing systems without complications and business change. Attackers who steal useless data they can’t monetize quickly move on to other targets."