Leo King reports: Insurance giant Zurich has lost the sensitive personal account details of 641,000 customers held on backup tape. The company admitted the tape had been missing for over a year in South Africa, after it was lost en route to a secure storage unit in August 2008. But it has only just noticed…
Category: Business Sector
Insurer Zurich loses customers’ details
Nick Collins of the Telegraph reports: Insurance giant Zurich has admitted losing the personal details of 51,000 British customers. The group said the backup tape was lost during a routine transfer to a data storage centre in South Africa in August last year. It said it had no evidence that the data had been misused,…
Gaping security hole turned 64,000 Time Warner cable modems into hacker prey
Tim Greene reports: A blogger helping to tune a friend’s wi-fi network uncovered a gaping security hole in Wi-Fi cable modem routers installed in 64,000 Time Warner subscribers’ homes, leaving them open to attack. Time Warner says that within the past week it has patched the problem until the manufacturer can provide a permanent fix,…
The Vernon Company database accessed; customers notified
Iowa-based The Vernon Company recently discovered that its system had been accessed via its vernoncompany.com web site. The breach was discovered on October 6, and the company shut down the web site until it could patch the vulnerabilities were patched. Further investigation suggested that the breach originated in Singapore, and may have occurred as early…
UPDATE: Credit cards also involved in Cheers Liquor breach
Wayne Heilman reports: A security breach in the credit-card processing system at Cheers Liquor Mart involves both credit and debit cards and likely involves customers of dozens, if not hundreds, of financial institutions nationwide, the Colorado Springs-based retailer said today. Cheers has shut down a wireless broadband system that was used to process credit-card transactions…
FTC settles latest charges against ChoicePoint
ChoicePoint, Inc., one of the nation’s largest data brokers, has agreed to strengthened data security requirements to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company failed to implement a comprehensive information security program protecting consumers’ sensitive information, as required by a previous court order. This failure left the door open to a data breach in…