The Minnesota Department of Commerce is cracking down on identify theft in the state, targeting two collections agencies and a title insurance company in recent investigations. The department has accused the three companies – Morris Abstract & Title Inc. of New Prague, HS and Associates of South St. Paul and First Financial Services Inc. of…
Author: Dissent
Update: BCBS of Tennessee to start sending notifications
John Commins updates us on the Tennessee BlueCross BlueShield breach: BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is readying a Nov. 30 mass mailing to some of its 3.1 million customers in the Volunteer State who may have had their Social Security numbers and other private data compromised after an Oct. 2 hard drive theft at a remote…
TX: Hospital workers fired for snooping
As an update on the firing of 16 employees of the Harris County Hospital District, KTRK in Houston reports that the employees were from different facilities: nine from Ben Taub, six from Northwest Community Center and one from Holly Hall. And it seems that my hunch that it was a snooping violation was correct. KTRK…
Risky business: Remote Desktop opened the door for Aloha hackers
When nine restaurants in Louisiana and Mississippi filed lawsuits against Radiant Systems and its Louisiana distributor, they may have represented only the tip of a substantial iceberg of hacks affecting restaurants that used Radiant Systems’ Aloha POS system. It seems that the scope of the problem is first coming to the public’s attention approximately one…
AU: Private files at risk of exposure
Rick Wallace reports: The Victorian government has failed to protect its citizens’ private data, even within its highest echelons, and its computer systems remain vulnerable to attacks from hackers and data thieves. An audit of the government’s handling of personal and private information has unveiled problems in the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Treasury and…
Ca: Province waited 7 months to notify public of sensitive security breach
Rob Shaw and Lindsay Kines report: The British Columbia government knew seven months ago about a serious security breach involving sensitive personal information from 1,400 income-assistance clients, yet only notified the affected people last week, the Victoria Times Colonist has learned. RCMP officers found the missing documents inside the Victoria home of a government worker…