Facebook to buy a major cyber security firm to prevent future breaches: Report

Facebook is finally looking at some solid solutions to reinforce the security of its platform, in the wake of a major security breach that took place last month.According to a report by The Information, Facebook is shopping for a cybersecurity company, so that it can prevent any security breach in the future.Apparently, Facebook is in advanced talks with one ‘major’ cybersecurity company, while it has offered deals to ‘several’ other companies as well.[caption id="attachment_4822701" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A Facebook panel is seen during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, in Cannes, France, June 20, 2018. Image: Reuters[/caption]The identity of these candidate companies hasn’t been revealed, but according to the report, Facebook is likely to buy software that could fold into its existing services, such as tools for signalling hacking attempts or securing individual accounts.This move comes amid a massive security breach of the platform in late September, where Facebook suspected that some 50 million user accounts may have been affected.However, recently, Facebook reviewed the breach and now believes that it compromised the personal information for 29 million users, including phone numbers, email addresses and recent searches.This vulnerability was found to be rooted to Facebook's "View As" feature, which lets users see what their profiles look like to other people. Attackers apparently exploited the code associated with the feature, allowing them to steal "access tokens", which were used to take over “29 million” people's accounts.