January 30, 2018 Incidents of cyber extortion have risen steadily over the past couple of years and, by many estimates, will continue to be a major source of disruption for many organizations. Cyber extortion can take many forms, but it typically involves cybercriminals’ demanding money to stop (or in some cases, to merely delay) their…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Hacking and phishing accounted for 75% of breaches reported to North Carolina in 2017
North Carolina issued a Security Breach Report for 2017. From the Executive Summary: This report provides a summary and discussion of the 1,022 data breaches reported to the North Carolina Department of Justice (NCDOJ) between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017. Under North Carolina law, businesses and state and local governments are required to…
Senate IT Tells Staffers They’re On Their Own When It Comes To Personal Devices And State-Sponsored Hackers
Tim Cushing reports: Notification of state-sponsored hacking attempts has revealed another weak spot in the US government’s defenses. The security of the government’s systems is an ongoing concern, but the Senate has revealed it’s not doing much to ensure sensitive documents and communications don’t end up in the hands of foreign hackers. Read more on…
IRIN: Audit exposes UN food agency’s poor data-handling
Vulnerable people in the world’s troublespots could be at risk because of sloppy handling of sensitive data by a UN agency, according to an internal audit. In response, the World Food Programme told IRIN it was “working to get ahead of the curve” on data-handling, would address weaknesses, and spend more on systems. Read Ben…
Health Data Breaches in 2017: The Year in Review
Protenus, Inc. has released its 2017 review of breaches involving health data. It is the second annual review they have published since we began collaborating on data collection and analyses. As a reminder of last year’s major findings: Protenus reported that in 2016, insider incidents constituted approximately 43% of the 450 incidents we had compiled…
December was one of the busiest months for health data breach disclosures
While you are eagerly awaiting the release of Protenus’s annual review of 2017 health data breaches, I thought I’d mention that December closed the year out with a bang with 52 possible breaches being disclosed. Only June, 2017 (with 53 reports) exceeded December. Of the 52 entries, 20 were hacking incidents and 17 were insider…