Back in December 2010, when Walgreens sent out its first breach notifications, one of the troubling aspects was that despite the fact that consumers had unsubscribed from their mailings, their data had been retained. The December 2010 notification email read, in part: We realize you previously unsubscribed from promotional emails from Walgreens, and that will continue….
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
UK: Lancashire Police officers dismissed for breaching data laws
The residents of Lancashire, like most people in Britain, hope that the police are there to protect them. So they will be shocked and disappointed today to find out that dozens of police have been using police equipment to spy on their partners and neighbours for the last three years. There were a total of…
Failure to encrypt portable devices inexcusable, say analysts
Following the report earlier this week that a laptop containing 13,000 BP claimants’ personal data was missing, Jaikumar Vijayan reports that data breaches involving unencrypted laptops and portable drives continues at inexcusably high rates: The company is only the latest in a long list of organizations that have made similar announcements over the past several…
OPINION: A breach too far
John Ryan writes: The data protection landscape in Ireland has evolved significantly in recent years. Not so long ago, it seemed an organisation could mislay customer information with impunity. There did not seem to be any major concern on behalf of the culprit organisation to put proper protection measures in place and there did not…
McAfee and SAIC survey: Companies pick and choose which data breaches to report
Ellen Messmer reports: One in 7 information technology companies have not reported data breaches or losses to outside government agencies, authorities or stockholders. In addition, only 3 out of 10 said they report all data breaches and losses suffered related to intellectual property, while 1 in 10 organizations will only report data breaches and losses…
Hackers Take Schools To School
Nice to see on data on this. Tim Wilson of Dark Reading writes: Some 63 percent of K-12 schools say they have experienced at least two security breaches in the past year, according to a new study, and their IT administrators are struggling to find the resources they need to keep up with security tasks….