Facing mounting criticism of her handling of her office’s massive data breach, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs has apologized for the security lapse that exposed personal information on 3.5 million citizens and has agreed to pay for identity restoration services out of her campaign fund. Read more on InfoSecurity. Okay, her campaign fund isn’t exactly the…
Category: Government Sector
Texas state employees sue Comptroller over recent security breach
Terry Baynes reports: A public school teacher sued the Texas Comptroller’s Office on behalf of 3.5 million current and former state employees after the comptroller posted the employees’ private information on its public website. The class-action lawsuit was filed in Houston federal court on Friday. It accuses the state agency of inflicting financial and emotional…
TX: Combs: More help on way for those affected by data breach
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs today said her office is taking additional steps to assist the 3.5 million Texans whose personal information — including names and Social Security numbers — was publicly accessible for more than a year because of a data security lapse by the comptroller’s office. Among those steps: Beginning Friday, a year of…
TX: Comptroller heads to court after security breach
John A. Salazar reports: The Texas Comptroller faces her first legal hurdle after a year-long privacy breach resulted in the online exposure of 3.5 million Texans’ private information. The Texas Civil Rights Project and Austin attorney Jim Harrington filed a petition against Comptroller Susan Combs in District Court. The petition asks for Combs to go on…
Sealed Records Exposed In Major Court Gaffe
In a shocking failure to protect sensitive details about dozens of ongoing criminal investigations, federal officials somehow allowed confidential information about sealed cases to be publicly accessible via the court system’s online lookup service, The Smoking Gun has learned. Over the past nine months, details of 40 separate sealed court applications filed by federal prosecutors…
Texas fires two tech chiefs over breach
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: The Texas State Comptroller’s office has fired its heads of information security and of innovation and technology following an inadvertent data leak that exposed Social Security numbers and other personal information on over 3.2 million people in the state. Two other employees have also been fired over the incident, a statement posted…