Paul Roberts writes: The Pentagon says the leak of diplomatic cables was an unforeseen consequence of its policy to encourage information sharing. That’s nonsense. When it comes to its failure to protect classified data, Uncle Sam’s been warned before. […] It was an act of almost total malfeasance, the responsibility for which lies squarely in…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Credit Cards At Risk from High-Tech Pickpockets?
Oh yeah, those RFID chips are really improving security. It’s supposed to make paying for things faster and easier – just wave your credit or debit card over a scanner and you’ve paid. But now some worry that radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is also making it easier for crooks to rip you off. Security…
Lost Laptops Cost Billions
Thomas Claburn reports: Businesses are losing billions of dollars annually as a result of lost and stolen laptop computers, a new study shows. Representatives from Intel, which sponsored “The Billion Dollar Laptop Study,” and the Ponemon Institute, which conducted the study, announced their findings at a media event in San Francisco on Thursday. The 329 organizations surveyed…
Lessons from the Most Interesting Data Breaches of 2010
Noa Bar-Yosef writes: As 2010 closes, we are given a chance to reflect on the past year of breaches. But something interesting has occurred which will surprise many: there has been a 93.7% drop in the volume of data stolen from 2009 to 2010. An analysis from the Privacy Clearinghouse, a public database which records…
Recommended: Evaluating Data Breach Disclosure Laws
Sasha Romanosky writes: I imagine most of you have received one or more letters from companies informing you that they lost your personal information. If so, what, if anything, did you do about it? Did you check your credit history?; close a financial account?; something else?; or nothing at all? If you did act, you…
ZA: Credit card fraud costs CT officials millions, but cases are down
Nathan Adams reports some statistics from Western Cape in South Africa that may be of interest to those who want to compare trends internationally: Western Cape police on Tuesday said credit card fraud cost provincial officials nearly R16 million this year. This type of fraud has decreased both in the Western Cape and nationally. […]…