Taniel Orr reports: Two employees in a York District Judge’s office have been let go after officials say they gave out sensitive information, which included a police officer’s work schedule, to suspects. According to charging documents, Solmaria Martinez-Arce, 31, also known as “Beba,” and Brittany Koons, 29, both of York, were desk clerks in Magistrate…
Category: Government Sector
Pentagon unveils new rules requiring contractors to disclose data breaches
Aliya Sternstein reports: New sweeping defense contractor rules on hack notifications take effect today, adding to a flurry of Pentagon IT security policies issued in recent years. Just this month, the Office of Management and Budget proposed guidelines to homogenize the way vendors secure data governmentwide. The Defense Department had already released three other policies that dictate how military vendors…
Ninth Circuit overturns CFAA verdicts for misusing databases
Orin Kerr writes: The Ninth Circuit has handed down United States v. Christensen, a case that touches on a bunch of computer crime issues that include the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The court overturned CFAA convictions for employee misuse of a sensitive database. I think that result is correct, although I’m…
Audit: California agencies vulnerable to IT security breach
Juliet Williams of AP reports: Many California state agencies are not complying with the state’s information technology standards, leaving them vulnerable to a major security breach of sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, health information or tax returns, the state auditor reported Tuesday. “Our review found that many state entities have weaknesses in their…
The OPM breach details you haven’t seen
Sean Lyngaas reports: An official timeline of the Office of Personnel Management breach obtained by FCW pinpoints the hackers’ calibrated extraction of data and the government’s step-by-step response. It illuminates a sequence of events that lawmakers have struggled to pin down in public hearings with Obama administration officials. The timeline makes clear that the heist…
JP: Pension data leak points to deeply flawed security culture
The Asahi Shimbun has an editorial about the Japan Pension Service leak reported previously on this blog. The editorial begins: Two reports have been released about the leak of personal data concerning 1.25 million or so people from the Japan Pension Service’s computer system due to a security breach caused by e-mails containing computer viruses….