The Identity Theft Resource Center offers a solution to the problem that has made headlines this week — young children have their pristine SSN misused to create credit histories for those who have poor credit ratings, are illegal immigrants, or have other illegal intent: Since the 1980’s, children in the US have been issued Social…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Break’s over: after decline in 2009, breach reports appear to rise in 2010
The Verizon breach analysis report released this past week reported declines in 2009 in both the number of records compromised and the number of breaches Verizon was asked to investigate. Their reported decline in number of breaches has some confirmation in reports from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the Identity Theft Resource Center, who…
Three breach reports, three sides of the elephant?
The recently released reports by Verizon, ArcSight/Ponemon, and Digital Forensics all offer some interesting data and statistics on breaches, but after reading them, I am reminded of the analogy of the six blind men and the elephant, as their findings are not always wholly consistent with each other. If we can generalize from the Verizon…
AU: Personal data ‘left open to frauds’
Richard Willingham reports: The security of personal information held by the state government is inadequate, leaving it at a heightened risk of being stolen and misused by frauds, a report has found. An Auditor-General’s report into government departments, released yesterday, said access to confidential personal data was too widespread and increased the risk of identity…
2010 Data Breach Report From Verizon Business, U.S. Secret Service Offers New Cybercrime Insights
From the press release: The 2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, based on a first-of-its kind collaboration with the U.S. Secret Service, has found that breaches of electronic records last year involved more insider threats, greater use of social engineering and the continued strong involvement of organized criminal groups. The study, released Wednesday (July 28),…
Schools risk theft of SS numbers of children
Matthew Cella reports: Schools are putting children at risk of identity fraud by obtaining their Social Security numbers when it is not required by law and often unnecessary, the Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General has concluded. Some school systems in at least 26 states collect the nine-digit identifiers when students from kindergarten through…