Earlier today, Robert A. Purbeck of Idaho, aka “Lifelock” and “Studmaster,” pleaded guilty in an Atlanta federal courtroom to two counts of an 11-count indictment filed against him in 2021. The two counts charged violation of Title 18, United States Code/ Sections 1030(a)(2)(C)/ 1030(c)(2)(B)(i) and 1030(c)(2)(B)(iii) and Section 2, more commonly known as the Computer…
Category: U.S.
The 2024 Breach Barometer reports a staggering 171 million patient records breached. And that’s just the ones we know about.
Each year, many news sites add up the number of reports on HHS’s public breach tool and then add up the number of records reported for those incidents. For 2023, that came to 725 reports and about 135 million records. Those numbers are disturbing, but not as disturbing as the numbers out today by Protenus….
What Austin ISD said led to student information being released to non-guardians
Johann Castro reports: Some Austin ISD students mistakenly had their records released to people who weren’t their parents or legal guardians. According to a report from KVUE’s media partners at the Austin American-Statesman, documents revealed that a special education database vendor mistakenly released the private information for about 160 Austin students in December. The report…
Scranton School District hit by cyber attack
Sarah Hofius Hall reports: The Scranton School District is the target of a ransomware attack, the acting superintendent confirmed Friday. Third-party forensic specialists are investigating the source of the incident and the impact on district systems and will “restore full functionality to the system as soon as possible,” according to the statement from Acting Superintendent…
FCC Updated Data Breach Notification Rules Go into Effect Despite Challenges
Hunton Andrews Kurth writes that on March 13, 2024, the Federal Communications Commission’s updates to the FCC data breach notification rules (the “Rules”) went into effect despite legal challenges. The rules were adopted in December 2023 pursuant to an FCC Report and Order (the “Order”). Their previous blog post explained the Rules: Pursuant to the…
Florida Legislature Passes Data Breach Immunity Legislation
Josh Hansen and Alfred Saikali of Shook, Hardy & Bacon write: The Florida legislature passed a bill that provides immunity to companies that suffer a data breach. The immunity is conditioned on the company: (1) complying with the notice requirements of Florida’s data breach notification law, and (2) maintaining a cybersecurity program that tracks certain…