A blackhat hacker known as “Lifelock” had claimed Holland Eye Surgery and Laser Center knew about his hack two years ago but failed to disclose it to patients or HHS. A follow-up investigation by DataBreaches.net uncovered evidence supporting his claim. The evidence has been turned over to federal regulators. On June 2, DataBreaches.net reported that…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
How they did it (and will likely try again): GRU hackers vs. US elections
Sean Gallagher does a deeper dive into the indictment of 12 GRU agents for meddling with the U.S. 2016 election. Here’s just a small snippet: After digging into this latest indictment, the evidence suggests Trump may not have made a very good call on this matter [publicly expressing doubt that Russia was involved]. But his…
Notification of data breach involving Palm Beach County Tax Collector’s Office leaves residents confused
Sam Smink reports on a case where 244 people have been notified of a data breach at the Palm Beach County Tax Collector’s Office that involves their names, addresses, and Social Security numbers,, but the notification is so poorly worded that no one really understands how to interpret what they are being told. Here’s where…
IL: Exposed Personal Information In Traffic Records Concerns Commissioner’s Office
Brad Edwards reports: An exclusive CBS 2 investigation revealing Cook County failed to protect the public’s personal information has prompted the Commissioner to take action. For years, the private information of anyone issued a traffic citation in the state of Illinois has been readily available to anyone who asks for it, CBS 2 reports. An…
North Dakota Veterans’ personal information at risk, audit says
James B. Miller reports: In an extensive report, the Office of the State Auditor recently expressed concerns with the North Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs’ handling of the veteran aid loan, hardship assistance grant, impact grant and highly rural transportation grant programs. […] Most notably, the audit found that the Veteran Aid Loan System was…
Thousands of Medical Records Left Unsecured–So Who’s Investigating?
A news report from a few days ago is actually a good example of the frustration some experience with OCR investigation of breaches. TL;DR version: a breach was reported by the media in March, 2017. This site also noted it. But now, more than one year later, there have been no consequences for the entity,…