John Eggerton reports: The SAFE Data Act passed out of the House commerce, Manufacturing & Trade Subcommittee Wednesday after procedural wrangling and partisan divisiveness over an issue everyone agrees on: there need to be more uniform laws on data privacy protection and breach notification. The big divide is over what personally identifiable information (PII) should…
Month: July 2011
(Update) Yellowstone County website hack did expose personal information
The Laurel Outlook reports: Yellowstone County officials confirmed Tuesday that a security breach of the county website may have exposed account information. According to release issued Tuesday by the Yellowstone County Commission, investigators have discovered that the motor vehicle electronic payment account information may have been exposed when a hacker penetrated the system on July…
WA: Social Security Numbers of 20,000 Swedish Med. Ctr. employees exposed on the web for 9 weeks
Carol M. Ostrom reports: Swedish Medical Center is alerting nearly 20,000 current and former employees that their personal information — including Social Security numbers — was accidentally made accessible on the Internet for a nine-week period. Read more on Seattle Times. A notice to employees, on an internal page of the medical center’s web site reads: July 20,…
(Follow-up) Doctor named and blamed for patient files found in Regina dumpster; Dickson recommends prosecution
The follow-up on a case of improper records protection/disposal originally uncovered in March, from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Saskatchewan: Saskatchewan’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Gary Dickson, has issued his Investigation Report H-2011-001 dealing with 180,169 pieces of patient personal health information (PHI) found in a recycling bin in Regina on…
Russia Amends Federal Data Protection Law; Privacy Enforcement on the Rise
Boris Segalis writes: Last week, the upper house of Russia’s federal legislature approved amendments to the country’s federal data protection law. The amendments impose detailed information security requirements on businesses that process personal data and revise some of the statute’s data subject consent provisions.The amended law will come into force when it is published in the…
Yet Another Bank Sued By A Small Business For Fraudulent Hacker Transfers
Ericka Chickowski reports: A new court case brought to bear against Professional Business Bank by Village View Escrow Inc. continued the battle waged over who’s to blame for hacking attacks that leave small business accounts drained following online password theft. Filed in late June in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles, the case is…