The database in question holds data on 92 million people in the U.K. About 200,000 people have access to it. If they cannot adequately secure the database from misuse by employees, well……. Nine local authority workers have been sacked after illegally accessing personal details of the public held on the government’s national identity database. In…
Category: Breach Incidents
Security lapse makes GPAs visible
Some may not consider this a breach, and it involves no financial data. The university pointed out that the exposed data could not be used for ID theft, and they’re probably quite correct in that, but what about FERPA and the privacy of education records? The University [of Oregon] has fixed a security breach in…
‘Secret’ Swedish police data sold by criminals
Supposedly secret police lists containing details about Sweden’s most dangerous criminals are up for sale across the country among members of the Swedish underworld. The documents have apparently been leaked from the Stockholm police’s Criminal Investigation Department. The lists, known as the Alcatraz List and Nova List, contain a wide-range of information about Sweden’s toughest…
Personal data mishandled at Commerce Dept.
The names and Social Security numbers of at least 27,000 Commerce Department employees were exposed to a risk of identity theft following an inappropriate transfer of the personal information in mid-July, according to a letter sent to department employees last week. An employee with the National Finance Center mistakenly sent an Excel spreadsheet containing the…
TNCC computer tech says access now cut off
It may be a sign of the times that even the risk of a data breach becomes newsworthy. Last week, the Daily Press reported that a former part-time computer help desk technician at Thomas Nelson Community College claimed that he had been laid off almost three weeks earlier, but that he still had computer access…
Medical records found in nurse’s yard
Hundreds of highly confidential medical documents including a parents’ plea for help for her mentally ill daughter have been found dumped in a nurse’s backyard. The documents, found in see-through recycle bags in easy reach of passers-by, contained sensitive information about patients from across South London including names, addresses and whether they had arthritis, bunions,…