Robert Barba reports: Pulaski Bank has filed a lawsuit against three former employees over mortgage data that the Creve Couer, Mo., bank claims the employees took and are using to give their new employer a leg up. The $1.3 billion-asset bank unit of Pulaski Financial filed its lawsuit Tuesday against Rita Rieke, Linda Stewart and…
Category: Financial Sector
Court Dismisses Data Breach Claims Against Countrywide – Holmes v. Countrywide
Venkat Balasubramani discusses the decision in Holmes v. Countrywide Financial Corp., et al.: In August 2008, a Countrywide employee engaged in a scheme to steal confidential customer information from Countrywide. An investigation found that the employee gained access to data from 2.4 million loan customers, and sold this information to unknown third parties for the…
UK: Welcome Financial Services Limited Fined £150,000 After Backup Tapes With Customer Contact Info Lost
From the Information Commissioner’s Office: Organisations are learning the hard way of the consequences of mishandling people’s information – and others need to heed the lessons the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, warned today at the launch of the ICO’s 2011/12 annual report. The Commissioner’s comments came as the ICO imposed a civil monetary penalty (CMP) of…
Update: Federal appeals court raps U.S. bank over shoddy online security
Jeremy Kirk reports the latest twist in a long-running lawsuit by a construction firm against its bank over fraudulent wire transfers: A U.S. construction company may stand a greater chance of recovering some of the $345,000 it lost in fraudulent wire transfers that it blames on poor online banking practices of its bank. Patco…
Hackers grab customer data, demand cash from payday lender
Elinor Mills reports: Hackers have released consumer data stolen from an online loan provider, after the company refused to pay an extortion fee. “On June 12, AmeriCash Advance received a fax, telling us that part of our Web site had been hacked. The letter went on to demand initial payment of $15,000 from us,” AmeriCash Advance, an…
Should we send in CSI to figure out the source of a data dump?
Here’s a great example of the perils in trying to report on hacks or breaches disclosed on Twitter or Pastebin. A hacker who self-identified as Reckz0r initially claimed to have hacked Visa and MasterCard and to have dumped 50GB worth of data (without credit card numbers). I had my doubts, and wasn’t surprised to read…