Deloitte and Accenture Breaches

In 2017, the large professional services firms Deloitte and Accenture suffered major security breaches. Both incidents exposed sensitive internal data and highlighted serious lapses in basic cybersecurity hygiene. Deloitte's incident involved unauthorized access to confidential client emails, while Accenture mistakenly exposed sensitive credentials through misconfigured cloud storage. These breaches were especially damaging to their reputations, given that both companies advise others on cybersecurity best practices. This breach showed how even industry leaders are not immune to security oversights

The Deloitte breach occurred due to a compromised administrative account that lacked multi-factor authentication. This gave attackers access to the firm's systems leading to sensitive documents being leaked. Investigations revealed credentials were stored insecurely and shared via public platforms, including GitHub and Google+. On the other hand, Accenture's security lapse stemmed from leaving multiple Amazon S3 storage buckets publicly accessible. These buckets contained API data, decryption keys, and internal infrastructure details. Although Accenture claimed no client data was compromised, the situation highlighted poor access control and cloud misconfiguration practices. Both cases demonstrated the need for encrypted credential storage, strict IAM policies, and realtime cloud monitoring