Angela Delli Santi reports: Taxpayers’ Social Security numbers, confidential child abuse reports and personnel reviews of New Jersey workers nearly went to the highest bidder after the state sent surplus computers out for auction. Nearly 80 percent of surplus computers in a comptroller’s office sample had not been scrubbed of data before being shipped to…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Corporate data breach average cost hits $7.2 million
The cost of a data breach went up to $7.2 million last year up from $6.8 million in 2009 with the average cost per compromised record in 2010 reaching $214, up 5% from 2009. The Ponemon Institute’s annual study of data loss costs this year looked at 51 organizations who agreed to discuss the impact of losing…
EU’s Hustinx: Data Protection Law Sanctions Should Mirror Competition Law
Jetty Tielemans writes: At a recent presentation in Frankfurt, Peter Hustinx, head of the European Data Protection Supervisor Office in Brussels, launched an intriguing idea: sanctioning violations of data protection law in the same manner as violations of competition law. The trade press regularly reports on multi-million euro fines for cartels or abuses of dominant…
Cambridge Who’s Who attempt to block former employee from discussing alleged data loss fails in court
Occasionally, we find out about a data breach via court filings instead of notifications or media coverage. This is one of those times, it seems. As far as I can determine, the incident discussed in the court case was not reported to the NYS Consumer Protection Board by either Cambridge Who’s Who or Proactive Technology…
Data Resellers Liable for Downstream Security Failures
Leslie Fair of the FTC comments on recent settlements that were reported earlier this month: Of course, no legitimate business would put out a welcome mat for crooks. But as the FTC’s data security cases make clear, that’s the effect when companies fail to take reasonable steps to secure sensitive information in their possession —…
UK: Treasury does well out of local data breaches
Taxpayers’ money is being used to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds of fines imposed on councils for data protection breaches. In the past two months, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined councils more than £350,000 for falling foul of laws. Defending the decisions the ICO said the purpose of monetary penalties is to…