Dish and Sling TV data breach

Recently, there was an outage affecting Dish Network and Sling TV. It wasn't a short outage either.

At the time, it was described as a "cybersecurity incident" but there were no details about it. Now, more details are coming out. And it's not good.

On Tuesday, Dish confirmed "certain data" was obtained from its IT systems during the cybersecurity breach. So far, it's unclear what data was taken, according to Cord Cutters News:

On February 27, we became aware that certain data was extracted from our IT systems as part of this incident. It’s possible the investigation will reveal that the extracted data includes personal information. The forensic investigation and assessment of the impact of this incident is ongoing. The security of our customers’ data is important to us, and if we learn that information was compromised, we’ll take the appropriate steps and let any impacted customers know

Just what this means, we don't know. Was financial or other personal data obtained? They haven't said, but this is in no way good news.

I don't currently have an active subscription to Sling TV, but as they do have payment information on file, there is the possibility of compromise. One thing I don't have to worry about is if my password was compromised. I use a different password for Sling TV than I use for other services. This is why.

If someone has my Sling TV credentials, since it's only for Sling TV -- that is, since I do not use that same password on any other account anywhere -- then those credentials cannot be used anywhere else.

If they did get passwords, and if someone is using the same password for Sling TV that they use on a financial account, that financial account is now in danger of compromise.

That's one of the reasons I'm so big on security. It is a big deal. It's also a change to the traditional way of thinking. I use a password manager -- BitWarden is my current choice -- to keep up with all those passwords. It was a bit of a change to my thinking and a change to my processes, but it keeps my Streaming Life more secure.