The Information Commissioner’s Office has served a monetary penalty of £100,000 on Kent Police after confidential information, including copies of police interview tapes, was left in the basement of a former police station. The highly sensitive information included records relating back to the 1980s, thought to have been left at the site when the building was vacated…
Category: Government Sector
IRS employee exposed 20k workers’ SSN on unsecured home network
The folks that we hope will look out for us so we don’t become victims of identity theft for tax refund fraud seem to be having problems with their own data. Stephen Ohlemacher of Associated Press reports: The Internal Revenue Service is reporting a potential security breach involving personal information about 20,000 IRS workers, former…
Men from Ukraine and New York indicted in U.S. cybercrime case
Jonathan Stempel reports: Federal prosecutors on Monday announced the indictment of three men they accuse of being members of an international cybercrime ring that tried to steal at least $15 million by hacking into U.S. customer accounts at 14 financial institutions and the Department of Defense’s payroll service. Oleksiy Sharapka, 33, and Leonid Yanovitsky, 39,…
NY: Email gaffe at Syracuse City Hall affects retired police officers
Jim Kenyon reports: The President of the Retired Police Officers Association says it came as quite a scare to 300 retired Syracuse police officers when they received this letter from Syracuse City Hall on Friday. […] The letter told the retired cops that there was a data breach within the Personnel Department. The retired officers and their dependents (sic) personal information including names, addresses and social security numbers had been compromised. […] According…
UK: West Midlands Police staff sacked for data breaches
BBC reports: Thirty staff at West Midlands Police have been investigated for a string of data protection breaches since 2009, new figures have revealed. Seven of those were dismissed without notice or resigned following the accusations, the force said. A further five were given final written warnings, while nine received management advice. Read more on…
UK: Police officers suspended in crackdown on illegal snooping
David Leask reports: Dozens of Scottish police officers are under criminal investigation in a clampdown on data breaches involving the force computer system. A total of 43 officers have been put on to restricted duties and another officer has been suspended, solely because of allegations of illegally accessing confidential information. Read more on Herald Scotland….