In the UK, the Treasury Solicitor’s Department has signed an undertaking with the Information Commissioenr’s Office. As described in the undertaking, there had been a number self-reported breaches involving exposure of individuals’ information due to incomplete redactions or failure to fully check: The Information Commissioner (the ‘Commissioner’) was contacted by the data controller on 6…
Category: Non-U.S.
Asylum seeker data breach: no decision yet on whether to inform those affected
Daniel Hurst reports: Australia’s top immigration bureaucrat has told a Senate committee he is yet to make a call on whether asylum seekers will be told that his department released their confidential personal details on its website. Martin Bowles, secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, characterised the data breach as “regrettable” but…
UK: £500 fine for PCSO who accessed data
Ryan Jennings reports: A former Colchester PCSO has been fined for accessing the information of 148 people “out of personal curiosity” while working for Essex Police. Arrie Bygrave, 23, of Peppercorn Close, Colchester, admitted breaching the Data Protection Act by checking 1,684 records for his own purposes. Read more on Daily Gazette.
Study shows recycled computers give away personal information
A study commissioned in Australia by the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), a non-profit, data protection watchdog agency, has found significant amounts of personal information left on recycled computers. For the organisations recycling their drives, this is a data breach problem. For individuals, their most private information is at risk. The NAID-ANZ Secondhand Hard…
UK: Police arrest two involved in Aviva data leak
Andrew Pearce reported on Feb. 13: Aviva has sacked two members of staff after customer claims information and car details may have been accessed or disclosed to third party companies. The insurer confirmed that when the “illegal activity” was identified, the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department was immediately contacted. And the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED)…
UK: Barclays cybertheft involved cooperation of employee
Steve Gold has an update to a breach noted previously on this blog involving a gang that transferred funds from some Barclays customers’ accounts. At the time, it was suspected that one of the gang members had posed as an engineer to install a KVM device that enabled them to access the bank’s computer and…