Facebook has made public the data security methods it employs and featured a system that is proactive and reactive. Observers have said other companies, such as The Home Depot Inc., Target Corporation, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and other major corporations that have been hacked in the past.
Facebook’s system prevents access to sensitive data. Even if a hacker manages to get into the system, they will not have the ability to decode encrypted sensitive username and password data and make the breach useless.
What’s unique about Facebook’s security system is that it can immediately encrypt sensitive information such as username and password. If a hacker breaches the social network’s database, they will just see strings of characters that are known as hashes. Facebook said that the hashes are almost impossible to decode. Sensitive data are not stored in their native format anywhere inside Facebook’s system.
Facebook is also looking on the Internet to find out whether any of their users’ information is sold on third party hacking websites. This might seem to be a simple action, as the social network giant doesn’t store usernames and passwords in simple text. Facebook goes a step higher by collecting suspicious data sold on the black market and then compare it through its hash encryption service. Facebook can compare the hash format to the black market data to determine whether the Facebook user information has been breached.
Theft of email addresses and passwords can result to dire consequences because people often use the same password on various websites. Lots of household company names have seen account data from their websites showing up on paste lists. Responding to these situations will take a lot of time and effort.
Facebook has an automated system that scans for data breaches and monitors sites that hackers use to divulge data they have stolen. Once it finds the data, they pass it to a program that compares it to a standardized format.