John Markoff reports: Ever since Google disclosed in January that Internet intruders had stolen information from its computers, the exact nature and extent of the theft has been a closely guarded company secret. But a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Why I Spoke Publicly About Cyber Incident
Bob Maley writes: If you have been following the blogosphere recently, you may have read that I used to be the chief information security officer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, having been dismissed for speaking about security without specific permission. We won’t go into that here, but the incident begs the question if sharing about…
Hancock Breach Reveals New Trend
Linda McGlasson writes: The Hancock Fabrics data breach continues to raise new questions about the security of point of sale (POS) devices at retail stores. In March, the national fabric store chain publicly confirmed the breach it suffered last summer, sending an open letter to its customers, revealing: “PIN pad units at a limited number…
As cloud computing grows, customer frustration mounts
Patrick Thibodeau reports: Users who turned to cloud computing for some of its obvious benefits, such as the ability to rapidly expand and provision systems, are starting to shift their focus to finding ways to fix some early weaknesses. Cloud computing today has some of the characteristics of a Wild West boom town, but its…
First Annual French Ponemon Study Shows the High Cost of Data Breaches for French Organizations
Privacy and information management research firm Ponemon Institute, together with PGP Corporation, a global leader in enterprise data protection, today announced the results of the first annual study into the costs incurred by French organisations after experiencing a data breach. The “2009 Annual Study: French Cost of a Data Breach” report, compiled by the Ponemon…
Almost Half of Disclosed Breaches Do Not Include Number of Records Compromised
Perimeter E-Security today unveiled the results of its annual U.S. Data Breach Study, a review of the scope and impact of data security breaches that occurred in the past year. “While 2009 had the fewest number of data breach incidents reported in the last four years, there was a dramatic increase in the average number…