More than 20 million Americans have multiple Social Security numbers (SSNs) associated with their name in commercial records according to a new study announced today from ID Analytics, Inc., a leader in consumer risk management. The study also found that rather than serving as a unique identifier, more than 40 million SSNs are associated with…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
What To Do When Your Database Gets Breached
Adam Ely excerpts from a new report by Dark Reading: It’s 3 a.m., and you get the call: There has been a breach. You don’t know much about it, just what the first responder could quickly relay. Upon arriving and assembling your team, you realize the situation is very serious. A database containing highly sensitive…
Maine breach reports obtained by DataBreaches.net
To follow up on my curiosity about what kind of year 2010 is turning out to be, I decided to use a primary source. Thanks to the cooperation of officials in Maine who responded promptly to my requests under Freedom of Information, I was able to obtain data on all breaches reported to them for…
eBay photocopier data risk ignored
John Leyden reports: The security threat from carelessly ditched computers increasingly applies to a much wider range of office equipment, as sophisticated storage technology finds its way into humble devices such as fax machines and printers. The risk that sensitive documents might make their way into the hands of undesirables was neatly illustrated by a…
Symantec survey: companies retaining way too much way too long
Symantec Corp. released the findings of its 2010 Information Management Health Check Survey, which hammers home a point I made the other day about getting rid of unnecessary data. For the current survey, Symantec surveyed 1,680 enterprises in 26 countries. They found that while 87% of respondents believe in the value of a formal information…
Closing a Door on Child Identity Theft
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…