On March 27, the Vermont Department of Labor began notifying individuals that a now-former employee improperly accessed and acquired their information from an unemployment insurance database. The personal information, which included names and Social Security numbers, was found in the former employee’s possession, but investigators have found no evidence to date that the information was transferred…
Month: April 2015
Hackers Make off With Data on 100,000 French State TV Contacts
AFP reports: Hackers bypassed insufficient safeguards to make off with data on 100,000 contacts held on French state TV computers, broadcasters said Wednesday. The attack occurred Tuesday and involved the theft of “a limited amount of personal data (names, postal and e-mail addresses and/or telephone numbers),” France Televisions said in a statement. The data heist…
MA: Salisbury Fire Department’s computers crippled by possible ransomware attack
AngelaJean Chiaramida reports: A nasty computer virus that had some of the hallmarks of a “ransomware” attack hobbled the Salisbury Fire Department recently, destroying computer files and temporarily forcing staffers to resort to pen and paper. […] The Salisbury Fire Department’s problem began about two weeks ago, when Souliotis’ desk computer started acting strangely when…
Controversial data breach bill passes House committee
Elise Viebeck reports: The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a controversial bill creating national data security standards after a chaotic markup that revealed deep Democratic concerns about the measure. The Data Security and Breach Notification Act appears headed for further changes prior to a vote by the full House. The committee approved it on…
UK law firms investigated 187 times for data protection breaches
John E. Dunn reports: UK law firms were investigated 187 times by the Information Commissioner in 2014 for possible breaches of the Data Protection Act (DPA), a Freedom of Information (FoI) data by encryption firm Egress Software Technologies has revealed. It might be assumed that legal firms would be especially careful with personal data but…
There’s TOO MANY data-leaking healthcare firms, growls Symantec
Darren Pauli reports: Security software company Symantec is being drenched in calls from breached health organisations that have lost devices or suffered an information security snafu. Some 80 per cent of the calls its incident response team has received since December are from healthcare firms, topping the charts for the number of breach incidents for 2014 for…