Ken Ward Jr. reports: The state Department of Environmental Protection said Thursday that a more than weeklong outage of some of its computer systems was not the result of a hacking incident reported by an internet technology firm. DEP did not provide additional information about the computer outage, which affected a variety of online databases…
Month: February 2017
State Data Breach Notification Laws: February 2017 Privacy Update
Cynthia J. Larose and Michael B. Katz of Mintz Levin write: During 2016, amendments to breach notification laws in five states went into effect (California, Nebraska, Oregon, Rhode Island and Tennessee). And by the end of last year, well over twenty states had introduced or were considering new regulations or amendments to their existing security breach…
AU: Privacy commissioner apologises for accidentally releasing email addresses
The Privacy Commissioner has been forced to apologise after the email addresses of more than 300 people were accidentally released. In an invite to a Information Security forum, the body revealed the emails of all those who had been invited. Read more on 3AW.
Teenage hacker sentenced for cybercrimes against Trump, Obama in 2013
Andrew Blake reports: A teenager hacker was sentenced in D.C. federal court Wednesday for a slew of cybercrimes committed against President Trump, Michelle Obama and former CIA Director John Brennan, among others. Eric Taylor, 19, was sentenced to 36 months probation Wednesday afternoon with regards to a conspiracy that resulted in the disclosure of Social Security…
$5.5 million HIPAA settlement shines light on the importance of audit controls
Memorial Healthcare Systems (MHS) has paid the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $5.5 million to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules and agreed to implement a robust corrective action plan. MHS is a nonprofit corporation which operates six hospitals, an…
TxDOT computer system in “security incident”
KXAN reports: The Texas Department of Transportation says some personal information of employees was compromised last week due to a “security incident.” KXAN first learned of the system breach from sources late Tuesday. The department says the breach of TxDOT’s automated administrative system was discovered Friday afternoon. The agency says “a small number of employees”…