Salesforce Breach Fallout: The Companies Affected & Impacted

Recently, Salesforce was the target of one of the largest cyberattacks of the year. Researchers have confirmed that attackers used social engineering attacks to gather massive amounts of data from Salesforce. So, in this blog, we’ll go over the Salesforce breach fallout, the companies affected, and how social engineering was used to create a devastating breach.

Salesforce Breach Fallout

The Salesforce breach fallout began in early August. With attacks reportedly most occurring from August 8^th to August 18^th. But this wasn’t from a regular cyberattack; it stemmed from a social engineering attack. Social engineering is when attackers use psychological manipulation to get something from a victim. Such as sending an urgent scam text or pretending to be someone else over the phone.

The way Salesforce got breached was through a sophisticated social engineering attack. Reportedly, the attackers impersonated IT support staff for Salesforce. When people would call, they were guided to a malicious Salesforce portal. This portal tricked victims into supplying credentials and multifactor authentication (MFA) codes.

When they gained access, they quickly exfiltrated the sensitive data from the victims’ Salesforce environments. Once the hackers had their data, they would approach the victim with an extortion demand, usually in the form of a bitcoin payment.

Although the attack happened recently, some businesses have already been affected.

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Companies Affected by The Salesforce Breach

A giant insurance company, Farmers Insurance, recently disclosed a breach affecting 1.1 million customers. According to BleepingComputer, their data was stolen as a result of the Salesforce attack.

One of Farmers’ third-party vendors alerted them of activity involving an “unauthorized actor who had access to a database containing Farmers’ customer data”.

Names, addresses, birthdays, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of social security numbers were all stolen.

Other companies that are believed to be linked to the attack include Adidas, Louis Vuitton, and others.

Photo by CISO series

How Businesses Can Learn from the Salesforce Breach Fallout

 While most of the companies reported in the Salesforce breach fallout were giant corporations, the real danger is broader. This breach shows that even a trusted third-party can become an attack vector, and no industry is immune.

Smaller organizations that use Salesforce may have also been affected, even if their names didn’t make the headlines.

This incident should serve as a warning for businesses everywhere that even if you aren’t attacked directly, your sensitive data could still be breached.

Strong Security Starts with Prevention

The Salesforce breach fallout is a reminder that prevention is easier and cheaper than reaction. Once data is stolen, the damage to your customers, your reputation, and your business can’t be undone. Prevention is the only real defense.

At Kirkham IronTech, we believe cybersecurity should be proactive, not reactive. We achieve this by offering services such as 24/7 monitoring, secure data backups, employee training, and more to help businesses stay protected. These layers of defense make it much harder for a cybercriminal to succeed.

So, how secure is your business? Are you prepared for a cyberattack or data breach? If not, don’t worry. We offer a free cybersecurity and IT infrastructure risk assessment. You can get in contact with our team of expertson any cybersecurity and IT vulnerabilities your business may have.

Then we give you our expert guidance on how you may want to fortify your infrastructure. With no fluff, just facts. No sales pitch, just a straight-up conversation on how you can protect your client data.