Here’s something you likely won’t see here in the U.S. – partly because we don’t have a Privacy Commissioner and partly because the U.S. Department of Education remains disturbingly placid about all the breaches in the education sector – the government of Hong Kong issued the following statement: The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
On the wall of shame, SCDOR’s breach should rank embarrassingly high
Embarrassing reminders about the South Carolina Department of Revenue (SCDOR) breach continue. The Associated Press reports on testimony in yesterday’s hearing by the state’s House oversight panel: Revenue has been criticized for not using the state information technology division’s computer monitoring services — which are offered but not required — before the hacking. While the…
Global Payments revises total breach cost estimates upwards, but wait until you see what *didn’t* cost them
In September, I posted Global Payments’ statement from their quarterly filing that dealt with the costs of a breach disclosed in March 2012. BankInfoSecurity.com has just reported on their most recent filing. Whereas last year, Global Payments estimated the cost of the breach at about $84 million, their current 10-Q filing puts the cost of the…
Some reputation hits are deserved
Access Securepak explains its service as a “program designed to allow family members and friends to send packages to inmates.” On Monday, their parent corporation, Centric Group, notified the California Attorney General’s Office of a breach that may have started back in August 2010 but was only recently discovered. The irony of a company name that…
Criminals steal €1.5 billion from EU credit cards
Nikolaj Nielsen reports: EU citizens are losing some €1.5 billion every year as criminals siphon off their money through the fraudulent use of debit and credit cards. A new report released on Monday (7 December) by the EU police agency Europol found that the thefts most often occur in the United States. “The majority of…
No one’s to blame? I beg to disagree.
Another data theft in the education sector. And yet again, no one did anything wrong because there was never any policy. Yesterday I added a breach to DataLossDB involving the Morgan Road Middle School in Georgia. A flash drive with unencrypted student information, including SSNs, was stolen from an teacher’s unattended car. A gradebook was…