Betty Adams of The Kennebec Journal reports: Almost 600 people receiving unemployment benefits last week got direct-deposit information — including Social Security numbers — belonging to another person. Dick Thompson, head of the state Office of Information Technology, said the misinformation was sent out May 27 while the office produced material for the Department of…
Category: Government Sector
UK: Sensitive information sent to wrong address
Liam Sloan of Newbury Today reports: A [West Berkshire Council] blunder led to intimate details of vulnerable youngsters being posted to the wrong person. Worlds End resident Alayne Summers was shocked to receive a torn, wrongly-addressed envelope containing 100 pages of highly-sensitive information about troubled pupils applying for places at West Berkshire schools. The documents…
Update: Virginia notifies residents of Prescription Monitoring Program hack
Bill Sizemore of The Virginian-Pilot reports that the state is sending breach notifications to 530,000 Virginians whose Social Security numbers may have been in the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program database that was hacked on April 30. An additional 1,400 users of the database who may have provided Social Security numbers when they registered for the…
UK: ID database snooped for celebrities’ secrets
Mark Ballard of The Inquirer reports that one Glasgow City Council worker was fired and another resigned before he could be fired after they were caught snooping into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Customer Information Systems (CIS) database. The database forms the core of the government’s identity card scheme and contains 85 million…
NZ: Police investigate alleged leak from DNA database
Police are investigating a claim an Environmental Science and Research worker has made an “inappropriate disclosure” from the national DNA profile databank. ESR said today a criminal investigation had started. “A staff member has been suspended pending the outcome of the police and internal investigations,” a spokeswoman said. The alleged security breach was the first…
Government laptops stolen in Belfast
UTV News reports: An urgent investigation has been launched into what material was taken from the corporate human resources offices over the weekend. All the machines were password-protected, marked and serial numbers recorded. Detectives have been called in. A spokesman for the Department of Finance and Personnel said: “In view of the nature of corporate…