Emma Hurt reports: Equifax, the Atlanta credit bureau, revealed in its earnings release Friday that dealing with its 2017 cybersecurity incident has cost about $1.4 billion plus legal fees. A year and a half ago, the company, which gathers consumers’ credit histories, revealed a massive security breach compromised the personal information of about 150 million…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
April sets new record for number of health data breaches and incidents (updated)
We’ve seen a record number of incidents reported in the first quarter of 2019, and it’s not getting any better in the healthcare sector. Whether you use HHS’s public breach tool, as Modern Healthcare does, or the system DataBreaches.net and Protenus, Inc. use to track U.S. breaches involving medical or health data, April set a…
Crippling ransomware attacks targeting US cities on the rise
Kevin Collier reports: Targeted ransomware attacks on local US government entities — cities, police stations and schools — are on the rise, costing localities millions as some pay off the perpetrators in an effort to untangle themselves and restore vital systems. The tally by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future — one of the first efforts to…
Utah picked a tech company for its medical cannabis program that has a history of glitches and hacks. But it’s cheap.
That’s a pretty bold headline from the Salt Lake Tribune, isn’t it? Bethany Rodgers reports: Utah is preparing to strike a deal with a Denver-based software company to build the digital backbone of the state’s emerging medical cannabis program, despite the business’ problems with outages, crashes and hacks in other states. The vendor, MJ Freeway,…
Why Rewards for Loyal Spenders Are ‘a Honey Pot for Hackers’
Tiffany Hsu reports: The punch cards stuffed in your wallet know next to nothing about you, except maybe how many frozen yogurts you still need to buy to get a free one. But loyalty programs, as they shift from paper and plastic to apps and websites, are increasingly tracking a currency that can be more…
2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is Out
This year, Verizon’s DBIR is based on data from 41,686 security incidents and 2,013 data breaches provided by 73 data sources, both public and private entities, spanning 86 countries worldwide. You can read the Executive Summary here, or read the full report here. There are some data in it that may raise an eyebrow or…