Noel Towell reports: The federal government is caught up in a second data privacy scare, this time involving a massive data-set on more then 96,000 of its public servants amid fears their confidential information might not be secure. In the second potentially serious Commonwealth data breach to become public in less than a week, the…
Month: October 2016
Surgeon General warns staff that personal information may have been stolen
Eric Yoder reports: The Surgeon General on Monday issued a warning to his staff that is all too familiar to federal employees: Your personal information may have been stolen. In an email, Surgeon General Vice Adm. Vivek H. Murthy told “commissioned corps” employees of the Public Health Service that information, including their names, dates of…
Illegal pot dispensary customers fume over email privacy breach
Jacquie Miller reports: Who’s shopping at Ottawa’s largest local marijuana dispensary chain? That information has been widely shared after Magna Terra Health Services accidentally sent an email to nearly 500 “clients and friends” that listed all their email addresses. Some Magna Terra customers who want to keep their medical marijuana purchases private are upset. Magna…
FTC v. LabMD: Brace for the Ripple Effect
Ricci Dipshan and C. Ryan Barber have an article on the importance and possible implications of LabMD’s challenge to the FTC’s application of their Section 5 authority when it comes to data security. Here’s a snippet: The lack of tangible evidence in the case is hard to overstate. While LabMD, like the many other companies…
Leet.cc data hacked in February publicly dumped
In August, LeakedSoure informed Softpedia that it had received the full database and source of Leet.cc, a service for creating and running Minecraft Pocket Edition servers. According to Softpedia at the time, there were over 6 million users’ records, consisting of username, hashed password, registration date, last login date, and user ID. “For the vast majority of users,…
InfoSec: FDA Needs to Rectify Control Weaknesses That Place Industry and Public Health Data at Risk
For years, Congress and federal regulators have been raising concerns about FDA’s infosecurity after report of a hack in 2013. So while the FDA has been issuing lots of statements about securing medical devices and mobile apps, the GAO would like them to know that they need to do a better job on securing their own data: What…