Dan Goodin reports: Fingerprint-reading software preinstalled on laptops sold by Dell, Sony, and at least 14 other PC makers contains a serious weakness that makes it trivial for hackers with physical control of the machine to quickly recover account passwords, security researchers said. The UPEK Protector Suite, which was acquired by Melbourne, Florida-based Authentec two years ago, is…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Scottish councils lose personal data of 10,000
From PublicService.co.uk Hundreds of council data security incidents have led to the loss of data on more than 10,000 people in Scotland over the past five years, figures released under freedom of information laws have revealed. Laptops containing images of children were lost, as was confidential pension information and Blackberry devices containing sensitive emails. These…
Glasgow City Council slammed for losing 700 computers
Kathleen Hall reports: Glasgow City Council has been slammed for losing more than 700 laptops and PCs in a probe into the body’s security malpractice. The council has lost 256 unencrypted laptops and nearly 450 PCs. It also has a further 541 unencrypted laptops, according to an audit report. The news follows the theft of…
Council data breaches increase by ‘alarming’ 1,600 per cent
Data breaches across the UK have dramatically increased in the past five years, figures released under freedom of information laws have revealed. Information disclosed by the Information Commissioner’s Office to a data security firm showed a major growth in self-reported data breaches every year. On average the increase since 2007 stood at more than 1,000…
Imation Compliance Heat Map
From Imation: To help businesses and IT pros navigate the compliance landscape and develop secure and functional infrastructures for data storage and protection, Imation created a Compliance Heat Map to depict the strictness of data breach laws and resulting penalties for breaches by state. Based on first-hand experience working with companies that face compliance challenges,…
More services should fall within scope of EU security breach rules, ENISA says
The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) said that LinkedIn and Research In Motion (RIM) were examples of businesses that had not been subject to EU laws on security breaches when they both experienced incidents within the past year. Currently EU laws require that firms that provide “public communications networks or electronic communications services”…