Chris Williams reports: The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been investigating the theft and sale of T-Mobile customers’ personal data for almost a year, it has emerged. News of the security breach, which saw rogue staff at the mobile operator divulge contract details to cold-calling marketeers, was only released to customers last month. According to…
Author: Dissent
WV: Policy to wipe old state computers is working, lawmakers told
Phil Kabler reports: A random audit of state computers up for sale through the Surplus Property division found that an initiative to assure that all hard drives are wiped clean is working, a report released Tuesday shows. Chief Technology Officer Kyle Schafer told a legislative interim committee that the policy was adopted in 2006, after…
Verizon Business Issues 2009 Supplemental Data Breach Report Profiling 15 Most Common Attacks
Verizon’s press release: The latest in the Data Breach Investigations Report series by Verizon Business security experts provides enterprises with an unprecedented look at the 15 most common security attacks and how they typically unfold. In the “2009 Supplemental Data Breach Investigations Report: An Anatomy of a Data Breach,” Verizon Business security experts tap the…
EPIC Supports Privacy Safeguards for Genetic Information Recommends Robust Techniques for Deidentification
From the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): EPIC filed comments with the Department of Health and Human Services, advising the federal agency to strengthen the requirements for classifying data as “de-identified” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. HHS proposed a rule that would clarify HIPAA and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination…
Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Palm Pre/Pixi Users Suffered from Data Loss
A Bay Area man filed a class action lawsuit against Palm and Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) for losing most all the contacts, appointments and other data stored by many of the hundreds of thousands of Sprint users of the popular Palm webOS line of mobile phones, including the Palm Pre and Pixi. The data loss is…
Attorney General Says Health Net Security Breach Concerns Worsen After Report Reveals Breach Was Likely Theft
The Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, has issued a statement about his intensified concerns about the Health Net breach: Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he is deeply troubled by an investigative report on the Health Net security breach that acknowledges a missing disk drive containing private financial and health information on hundreds of thousands of…