From Protenus, with whom DataBreaches.net collaborates in compiling monthly statistics for health data breaches: The number of breached records reported in August totals an unsettling 8,804,608. While this total does not exceed the staggering 11 million records we reported in June, it once again demonstrates that PHI breaches continue to be a huge problem for a wide…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
UK businesses bullish about ransomware, but majority pay up when attacked
An interesting press release from Trend Micro suggests that more UK entities are paying ransom than we might hear about in the media. The survey was conducted in August: London, September 7th, 2016 – The majority (74%) of UK organisations who haven’t experienced a ransomware attack remain bullish about the threat, claiming they would never…
Billion-dollar hack – or not? A new approach to calculating true cost of security breaches
Katie Courage reports on some research by Yashwant Malaiya, professor of computer science in the College of Natural Sciences at Colorado State University and Abdullah Algarni, a doctoral researcher in the same department. Their research is oriented to developing a standard, public – and evolving – model that will permit more rigorous study on the costs of a…
DHS Exposes Thousands of Individuals’ Private Information — Including Feds, Golfers and Priests
Eric Katz reports: Customs and Border Protection released the personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, of thousands of individuals to dozens of federal agencies during an investigation of cheating on polygraph tests. CBP violated some aspects of the Privacy Act in distributing the information across government, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found in…
162 million personal data items leaked over six years in Beijing
ECNS reports: More than 162 million personal information items were leaked in the past six years, with courier companies, educational institutes and online stores the major sources, reported Beijing Youth Daily. From 2013 to 2016, courts in Beijing handled 67 cases involving illegal sale or supply of personal information. Those cases that happened from 2010…
U.S. personnel management hack preventable, congressional probe finds
Dustin Volz reports: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) did not follow rudimentary cyber security recommendations that could have mitigated or even prevented major attacks that compromised sensitive data belonging to more than 22 million people, a congressional investigation being released on Wednesday has found. Two breaches at the federal agency detected in 2014…