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"This isn’t anything new. Granted, we haven’t seen a breach of social security numbers on this scale before but it happens all day, every day in smaller chunks. It’s likely that every social security number has been leaked on the dark web multiple times over, long before this most recent attack.

The idea that you can’t give out your social security number because it’s ’your biggest secret’ just doesn’t exist anymore. But importantly, the world hasn’t collapsed. The right controls are in place to ensure attacks like this don’t cause mass chaos. It just brings awareness to the fact that having social security numbers is an outdated concept. We now live in an age of two-factor authentication and biometrics. It may well be that the government needs to reconsider the whole concept of social security numbers in light of the technology we now have to defend against attacks and protect the security of its citizens.

What is essential to understand is cybersecurity is not the responsibility of the individual. Following basic guidance is useful, but it is the duty of corporates and governments to defend its citizens. Make no mistake: these are attacks. Just because they lack physicality doesn’t make them any less real and they’ll only become more dangerous to society and to the economy. It’s time to take a cyber safety approach, pushing past mere compliance and tick-boxing exercises and treat the threat with the severity it requires."