Michael Cooney reports: In this the heavy tax season where billions of dollars and tons of personal information is relayed to and from the government, it’s more disconcerting to hear that the Internal Revenue Service is still struggling to keep private information secure. A report out today from watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office says…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
20 Banking Breaches So Far in 2010
Linda McGlasson of bankinfosecurity.com reports: There have been 171 reported data breaches so far in 2010, and 20 of these involve financial services companies. This means that in less than one quarter of the year, we already have seen nearly one-third of the 62 banking-related breaches reported in all of 2009. The rest of the…
Aronberg expresses concern over security of state employee data
Bill Cotterell reports from Florida: A lawmaker Thursday demanded to know how a $248-million personnel contract got renewed with a Convergys operation recently sold to a British firm. The Department of Management Services assured Sen. David Aronberg that security of state employee data, and operation of Tallahassee and Jacksonville service centers, will continue unchanged. Aronberg,…
Audit: Some sensitive data at ISU not adequately secured
Kurt Erickson reports: State auditors say lax security at Illinois State University could have allowed university credit card accounts, personal health information and employee Social Security numbers to get into the wrong hands. In a report on the university’s financial practices for the year ending in June 2009, Illinois Auditor General Bill Holland said auditors…
Wickenburg Unified School District struggles to secure sensitive student data
Pat Kossan reports that data security in the Wickenburg Unified School District was found seriously lacking in a state audit: Wickenburg Unified School District has not secured its computer system containing sensitive student data, including student addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers, state auditors found. Staffers from the Arizona Office of the Auditor General…
Analyst Study Shows Employees Continue to Put Data at Risk
From the press release, results of the annual “Human Factor in Laptop Encryption” study by Absolute Software and the Ponemon Institute: This year’s expanded study was conducted in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and Sweden, in addition to the United States. The study found that 15% of German and 13% Swedish business managers have…