Tina Sfondeles reports: A computer server of a vendor with city and state contracts to sell Illinois license plate stickers and Chicago vehicle stickers at currency exchanges was exposed to the Internet in May — although city and state officials insist there was no security breach. But that’s not enough for one Cook County watchdog,…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Here’s what data breaches are costing companies in 2019
Thomas Barrabi reports: The typical consumer data breach costs compromised businesses millions of dollars, with expenses rising exponentially for incidents on par with those that affected Equifax or Facebook in recent years, according to new research from IBM Security and Ponemon Institute. On a global scale, the average data breach exposes 25,575 sensitive consumer records and carries…
Vigilante Hacker ‘Phineas Fisher’ Denies Working for the Russian Government
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bichhierai reports: Four years ago, a vigilante hacker pulled off one of the most daring hacks of all time. The hacker, known as Phineas Fisher, broke into the servers of Hacking Team—one of the most hated companies in the cybersecurity world—and put all its data online. This was the equivalent of a museum robber…
Hackers breach 62 US colleges by exploiting ERP vulnerability
Catalin Cimpanu reports: Hackers have breached the systems of 62 colleges and universities by exploiting a vulnerability in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) web app, the US Department of Education said in a security alert sent out this week. The vulnerability is in Ellucian Banner Web Tailor, a module of the Ellucian Banner ERP that…
UK: Estate agency fined £80,000 after accidentally exposing personal info online for two years
The Information Commissioner’s Office issued the following press release involving a monetary penalty related to an unintended exposure incident and a misconfiguration. Imagine if every such leak here resulted in the FTC or a state attorney general fining the entity….. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined a London estate agency £80,000 for leaving 18,610…
Data Breaches and Educational Institutions
Marjorie Spivak, Taylor Ey, and Liz LeVan Riley of Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP write: Consider these five steps during your summer break to address the protection of confidential information and combat cybersecurity risks before the start of fall semester. 1. Information Assessment: Identify what data your institution holds, how it is used, how is…