Security should be of utmost importance if Uber wants to continue its use of the God’s View aerial monitoring system.
After being under investigation by New York state attorney general’s office following a potential third party attack back since September 2014, Uber is forced to pay a $20,000 for not disclosing a data breach. The company stated that driver location and license plate numbers were leaked only after a couple of months have passed since the event, in February 2015.
This information is constantly viewed by the company by using a monitoring system known as God’s View. This aerial surveillance system was allegedly hacked while Uber maintained this breach a secret from both the drivers and state attorney, circumventing the laws that dictate how this type of information leak should be disclosed immediately.
The breach happened in May 2014, with data of over 50.000 Uber drivers being leaked to third parties by hackers.
Although the fine might seem rather small at first glance, the attorney’s decision is not only limited to this. Uber is ordered to completely revamp its GPS location surveillance systems as well, a process that will supposedly reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. Extensive data encryption will be applied to each and every piece of information regarding drivers, as well as requiring authentication from every employee when they attempt to access this information for business purposes.
The current plan of the company is to expand its services to Long Island. This movement is also backed by the Long Island Association, the largest business group in the area. The reasons why Uber services are required in the region are based upon the citizens’ need of car transportation across the territory and a viable method of reaching the Long Island Rail Road in a more timely fashion.
Local businesses are also expected to get a rather hefty boost preceding this expansion, as well as reducing the odds of drunk-driving related accidents. The latter will be the most noticeable over a short period of time because if a person has been drinking, they will have an affordable method of getting home safely without posing a threat to other drivers and pedestrians.
Unfortunately, the company hit a massive roadblock in the Hampton area in 2015, when state officials from the East Hampton Town charged 20 Uber drivers for not abiding to taxi laws during Memorial Day. Following these charges, the Uber company completely pulled out of the region in June, but odds are somewhat high in regards to it attempting to expand into Hampton once again in the following years.
Although Uber is forced to pay a $20,000 for not disclosing a data breach, this type of event might happen once again if the company will not abide by the attorney’s order regarding GPS data encryption. But due to the fact that Uber spokespersons stated that the company is extremely focused on ensuring drivers’ information safety at all times, this type of hacking event may become less likely in the near future.
Image source:www.pixabay.com
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