Patricia Daddona reports: An audit of a 2007 data breach of state taxpayer’s personal information on a stolen laptop shows the state took too long to address the situation but has since made strides to prevent future incidents. Two years ago, some 106,000 Connecticut taxpayers’ names and Social Security numbers were compromised when an employee,…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Schwarzenegger vetoes Simitian’s privacy protection bill
Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed State Senator Joe Simitian’s (D-Palo Alto) Senate Bill 20. The bill would have strengthened and updated California’s landmark privacy protection law that requires businesses and state agencies to notify residents when sensitive personal information is lost or stolen from their databases. “I’m surprised as well as disappointed by the Governor’s veto,“ said…
Big-Box Breach: The Inside Story of Wal-Mart’s Hacker Attack
Kim Zetter reports: Wal-Mart was the victim of a serious security breach in 2005 and 2006 in which hackers targeted the development team in charge of the chain’s point-of-sale system and siphoned source code and other sensitive data to a computer in Eastern Europe, Wired.com has learned. Internal documents reveal for the first time that…
Number of identity-fraud victims in Ireland hits 90,000
John Kennedy reports: More than 3,000 new cases of identity fraud have been identified since this time last year, bringing the total number of victims in Ireland to 90,000. New research brought out in conjunction with National Fraud Week, 12-18 October, reveals 51pc of Irish people are still not sure how fraudsters get access to…
Cyberthieves find workplace networks are easy pickings
Byron Acohido provides a write-up of some of the TJX and Heartland Payment Systems incidents that emphasizes the point that many hacks go undetected or unnoticed — and that cyberthieves often take considerable time to start and continue stealing data: Companies, understandably, rarely discuss data breaches. However, proof that data thieves are targeting hundreds of…
Heartland Breach: Inside Look at the Plaintiffs’ Case
Two stories today take a look at the the master complaint (pdf) filed last month in U.S. Southern District Court in Houston. Linda McClasson of BankInfoSecurity.com provides a timeline and re-hash of the breach that incorporates allegations from the lawsuit, including statements made by Heartland before and after the breach and the statement made by…