Heather Landi reports: Hackers are using the Dark Web to buy and sell personally identifiable information (PII) stolen from healthcare organizations, and exposed databases are a vulnerable attack surface for healthcare organizations, according to a new cybersecurity research report. A research report from IntSights, “Chronic [Cyber] Pain: Exposed & Misconfigured Databases in the Healthcare Industry,”…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Equifax Breach “Entirely Preventable”: House Oversight Committee
From the good folks at EPIC.org: In a report released today, the House Committee on Oversight declared that the Equifax breach, which affected 148 million U.S. consumers, was “entirely preventable.” The breach, one of the largest in U.S. history, compromised the authenticating details, including dates of birth and social security numbers, of more than half of American consumers….
New Zealand Privacy Commissioner releases annual report
Stuff reports on a case in New Zealand that was cited in a newly-released annual report by the Privacy Commissioner. Disturbingly, the unnamed government agency not only did not set a great example for data protection, but they demonstrated less than admirable response to the incident of insider-wrongdoing that harmed a member of the public….
North Korea-linked Hackers Target Academic Institutions
Ionut Arghire reports: A threat group possibly originating from North Korea has been targeting academic institutions since at least May of this year, NetScout’s security researchers reveal. The attackers use spear-phishing emails that link to a website where a lure document attempts to trick users into installing a malicious Google Chrome extension. Following initial compromise,…
Standing Issues in Data Breach Litigation: An Overview
Priscilla Fasoro and Lauren Wiseman of Covington & Burling write: As many data breach litigation cases have demonstrated over recent years, the question of a plaintiff’s standing can be quite important to the outcome of each case. While the Supreme Court has addressed standing issues in several cases with potential applicability in the data breach litigation context,…
U.S. Readies Charges Against Chinese Hackers
Dustin Volz reports: Federal prosecutors are expected to unseal criminal charges as soon as next week against hackers linked to the Chinese government who have allegedly engaged in a sophisticated multiyear scheme to break into U.S. technology service providers in order to compromise the networks of their clients, according to people familiar with the matter….