Daniel Bitonti reports: A portable computer hard drive containing the personal information of more than 500,000 student loan recipients was left unsecured for extended periods of time by government employees and was not protected by a password or encryption, Canada’s top privacy watchdog says. In a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, interim federal privacy…
Month: March 2014
UK funders get tough on privacy breaches
Ewen Callaway writes: Leading UK organizations that fund research have threatened to revoke the funding of scientists who determine the identities of participants in medical and genomic studies who had expressed a wish to remain anonymous. The warning was issued on 24 March by the Medical Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council…
Personal Records Thrown In Dumpster From Topeka Dental Service Company
WIBW in Kansas reports: Last week 13 News reported about confidential records found in a dumpster behind a Topeka office building. Since then, 13 News has been investigating to find out where those documents came from, and it seems the origin isn’t too far away from where they were found. […] Jim found an additional…
KY: UK HealthCare warns 1,079 patients after laptop with their info stolen from Talyst employee
LEX18 reports: UK HealthCare [University of Kentucky HealthCare] is notifying more than 1,000 patients about a breach of protected health information. Officials say someone stole a password protected lap-top owned by a business partner of the hospital. They say that laptop contains confidential information about current and former patients. Read more on LEX18 A statement…
Rockefeller: Staff Report Details Target’s Missed Opportunities to Stop Massive Data Breach
Chairman John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV today released a staff report titled, “A ‘Kill Chain’ Analysis of the 2013 Target Data Breach.” The report details how Target possibly failed to take advantage of several opportunities to prevent the massive data breach in 2013 when cyber criminals stole the financial and personal information of as many…
GAO: VA Needs to Address Long-Standing Challenges
Highlights from the GAO Report, “INFORMATION SECURITY: VA Needs to Address Long-Standing Challenges (GAO-14-469T): The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) continues to face long-standing challenges in effectively implementing its information security program. Specifically, from fiscal year 2007 through 2013, VA has consistently had weaknesses in key information security control areas (see table). Control Weaknesses for…