From the Goldwater Institute: January 28 — The Goldwater Institute was shocked to learn yesterday of a massive breach of privacy by the Arizona Department of Education, which released private personal information relating to almost 7,000 parents who participate in the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) program. The data breach is just the latest in…
Category: Government Sector
PA: Not Retroactively Redacting May Have Exposed Social Security Numbers
Jamie Martines reports: Hundreds of Social Security numbers could be contained in unredacted documents housed on the Allegheny County Civil Courts public website. The Tribune-Review located federal tax lien documents filed each year from 1997 to 2010 that display unredacted tax identification numbers. Read more on Governing. This is sooooo 1990’s…. still.
DOD contractor suffers ransomware infection
Catalin Cimpanu reports: Electronic Warfare Associates (EWA), a 40-year-old electronics company and a well-known US government contractor, has suffered a ransomware infection, ZDNet has learned. The infection hit the company last week. Among the systems that had data encrypted during the incident were the company’s web servers. Read more on ZDNet.
Georgia’s state agencies nearly recovered from last July’s Ryuk attack
Maggie Lee reports: About six months later and $750,000 poorer, Georgia is nearly back to normal after online attacks that blocked law enforcement officers and the public from accessing electronic records used to settle legal questions. But the money went to pay cyberattack insurance deductibles, not ransoms. Read more on Georgia Recorder.
PH: PSA ends Teleserv deal over data breach complaints
Ben O. de Vera reports: The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has terminated its agreement with online and phone services provider Pilipinas Teleserv Inc., which it blamed for two complaints of data privacy breach before the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). Read more on Inquirer.net
Iowa DHS data breach: Boxed for shredding, documents were dumped by janitor instead
Andrea May Sahouri reports: The Iowa Department of Human Services reported Friday a data breach that occurred in November involving personal information of 4,784 individuals related to income maintenance and social work cases in Dallas County, according to a DHS news release. A contracted custodial company mistakenly emptied boxes containing documents to be shredded into the office’s…