BBC reports: Thirty staff at West Midlands Police have been investigated for a string of data protection breaches since 2009, new figures have revealed. Seven of those were dismissed without notice or resigned following the accusations, the force said. A further five were given final written warnings, while nine received management advice. Read more on…
Month: March 2014
Where there's a breach, there's a lawsuit
Abby Sewell reports: A patient whose personal information was stolen in a break-in at a medical billing contractor’s office in Torrance has filed a class-action lawsuit against the company and Los Angeles County. Two Los Angeles law firms filed a complaint Friday in Superior Court. The suit was initially filed on behalf of a single…
AZ: Hospitalists of Arizona laptop stolen from St. Mary's Hospital contained patient information
Carmen Duarte reports: A stolen laptop from a work room at St. Mary’s Hospital has caused a potential patient information security breach, officials said Friday. […] Hospitalists of Arizona was informed Jan. 15 about the potential breach, and notified hospital security and law enforcement. The laptop contained health and basic personal information for about 1,700…
NHS sells a billion patient records
Jon Ungoed-Thomas reports: A billion NHS records containing details of patients’hospital admissions and operations have been sold to a marketing consultancy working for some of the world’s biggest drug companies, The Sunday Times can reveal. Harvey Walsh, a healthcare intelligence company, has paid for a database that, although stripped of names and addresses, does include…
Missed Alarms and 40 Million Stolen Credit Card Numbers: How Target Blew It
I finally got around to reading this fascinating report by Michael Riley, Ben Elgin, Dune Lawrence, and Carol Matlack for Bloomberg Businessweek. This goes far beyond other media coverage about how Target “missed” or “ignored” FireEye alerts and really gives more details of how the breach occurred.
UK: Police officers suspended in crackdown on illegal snooping
David Leask reports: Dozens of Scottish police officers are under criminal investigation in a clampdown on data breaches involving the force computer system. A total of 43 officers have been put on to restricted duties and another officer has been suspended, solely because of allegations of illegally accessing confidential information. Read more on Herald Scotland….