The holiday season is a notoriously tough time for cybersecurity. Take the 2013 attack on Target Corp. or the Sony Pictures Entertainment breach last year. It looks as though the breaches have started up again for the season with the recent announcement that VTech Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based company that makes electronic toys for young children, has suffered a major hack.
The hack exposed data belonging to 4.9 million adults and 6.4 million children, including names, addresses, photos and chat logs. The VTech hack is a bit unusual for a major data breach for several reasons, including the lack of clarity around the perpetrator or perpetrators’ intent, and the fact that the breach targeted the data of young kids—not exactly the typical target demographic.
