J. Nicholas Hoover reports: The Department of Defense risks exposing personally identifiable information and other sensitive data because it isn’t consistently following proper procedures in preparing computer< equipment for disposal or reuse, the military's inspector general has found. In an evaluation of DoD internal controls and processes, the inspector general found that several military departments...
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Study: 600K campus records hacked this year
Dennis Carter reports: Computer hackers reportedly have stolen identifying information and credit card numbers from more than half a million — some 600,000 — college students, faculty, and alumni this year. This is prompting some campus IT officials to call for a “total overhaul” of computer security protocol. Identity Theft 911, an Arizona-based company founded…
Lax security left Georgia employees’ data vulnerable
Aaron Gould Sheinin reports: An audit of state government’s accounting office found lax computer security that left thousands of state employees’ personal information vulnerable to theft by hackers. No evidence was found that personal and financial information was stolen, according to the audit, released last week. But the report noted that weaknesses in the system…
Unlearned Lessons of ChoicePoint, Four Years Later
Bill Brenner writes: It’s been four years since data broker ChoicePoint acknowledged the data security breach that put it in the middle of a media firestorm and pushed data protection to the top of the infosecurity community’s priority list. Since then, the business world has made plenty of progress hardening its data defenses — thanks…
Data Breaches: Patterns and Their Implications
Luther Martin of Voltage Security has an article on patterns in breaches and how recognizing certain patterns or mathematical likelihoods can help us determine if industry efforts to reduce breaches are actually making an impact. You can read his article on CSO Online.
Biggest Breaches of 2009
Linda McGlasson of BankInfoSecurity.com provides an analysis and commentary, based on ITRC’s statistics for this year. There have been 356 data breaches so far in 2009, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). And 46 of those breaches have involved financial institutions – up from 34 at this same time last year. In reviewing…