Last month’s data breach at Sony Pictures has been enormously damaging, humiliating its senior executives, prompting employee lawsuits, and even causing the company to cancel the release of the upcoming film “The Interview” that apparently drew the hackers’ ire, reports The Recorder. It is also waking companies up to new risk scenarios that go beyond the release of customer information. And it is sounding alarms in industries that hadn’t previously been seen as targets.
Companies in all industries face the frightening prospect of hackers who could cripple their business and open them up to a morass of legal liability. “I’m getting calls every day,” said Robert Braun, a Los Angeles lawyer who has advised clients on data privacy risks. Media and manufacturing companies—two industries that have not previously been considered juicy hack targets—are among those taking note, says Ronald Plesco of the non-profit National Cyber Forensics & Training Alliance Information. Companies have realized that a hack means “not just the embarrassment of having to announce that there’s a data breach. It’s ‘what if you actually cannot run your business?'” Braun explained.