Exactis, A company located in Palm Coast, Florida found itself on every news channel in the US since it exposing the data of 230 million individuals and 110 million companies. The issue seems to have occurred do to a misconfigured ElasticSearch function.
The Flagler County News was able to speak to CEO of Exactis Steve Hardigree about the 340 million records that were exposed online and accessible to the public. The CEO said that there was no data breach or leak in their system since they didn’t notice anything being stolen from their database.
Hardigree also said that the company has been working with a security researcher and the Attorney General Office. He said that “We’re considered enemy No. 1 by the cybercommunity,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to amount to anything because there’s not been any damage done to anyone.”
As a data aggregator company, Exactis only collects publicly available information, the company consists of only a few individuals with most of the employees working remotely. The compilation of this type of data is common in the marketing world. When the raw data is collected and organised into individual profiles they will create a structure for the marketers to increase the sales of the companies.
Hardigree said his company was generating $350,000 in sales, but the damage done by the misconfigured ElasticSearch database may be the end of his company. “I’m not sure if there’s a way for us to come back,” he said.
