Martin Beckford and Heidi Blake report: A secret report on Labour’s controversial child protection database found “significant risks” to security. The official study, which ministers refused to publish for more than two years, disclosed that “residual” dangers remained in ContactPoint despite efforts to make the system safe. It pointed out that security standards differed at…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
WellPoint Security Breach Put At Risk Information For 470,000 Nationwide
The latest revelations on the Anthem/Wellpoint breach raise some questions for this blogger. Matthew Sturdevant reports that the recently disclosed Anthem breach may affect many more than the 230,000 recently reported: An online security breach put at risk the personal, financial and medical information of 470,000 WellPoint customers nationwide, including 5,600 in Connecticut, customers are…
Information Security and Privacy Controls Over the Airmen Medical Support Systems
Information Security and Privacy Controls Over the Airmen Medical Support Systems Federal Aviation Administration Report Number: FI-2010-060 Date Issued: June 18, 2010 From Results in Brief: The names, addresses, Social Security numbers, medical data, and other PII of airmen are not properly secured to prevent unauthorized access and use. We found serious security lapses in…
Update: CNET retracts article on Android app privacy threat
Ed Burnette reports: When a company writes a white paper they send out a press release to get as many news sites as possible to mention the report in their own stories. This strategy worked all too well on Tuesday when security firm SMobile Systems published a scary sounding report about Android apps. […] It…
NY: Glenville personal data exposed
Lauren Stanforth reports: The town did not protect sensitive personal information when it used employee Social Security numbers on unsecured time sheets and unnecessarily kept credit card information of those who paid traffic fines, according to a state comptroller’s audit released Tuesday. The audit, which reviewed practices from January 2008 to March 2009, found that…
One in five Android apps exposes private data -updated
Emma Woollacott writes: Nearly ten thousand Android applications give third party apps access to private or sensitive information, says a report from SMobile Systems. One in five of the 48,000 apps available grants a third party application access to private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes, such as identity theft,…