Elgan Hearn reports that the ICO is investigating a breach involving sensitive information of nine patients. An envelope containing the nine letters from a consultant for patients right across Shropshire were wrongly included in a letter sent to a patient in Newtown. The envelope was passed on to health campaigner Cllr Joy Jones, who brought the…
Category: Non-U.S.
Italy investigates Anonymous hack of state employees’ emails
Reuters reports: Italian police are investigating a hack into the email accounts of government employees by activist group Anonymous, which then published documents it had extracted. On its Italian blog Anonymous uploaded a screenshot of an email purportedly sent from a government email address to an employee of the prime minister’s office containing the names…
Ca: VerticalScope confirms user information stolen from six hacked websites
The Canadian Press reports: Toronto-based VerticalScope Inc. says six of the community websites it administers were hacked last month in the latest of a recent series of data breaches affecting Canadian online user information. […] It says the data did not include credit card or banking information but did include usernames, email addresses, encrypted passwords,…
UK: Cash Converters hacked; customer data held for ransom
Tim Collins reports: Hackers who attacked the now defunct website of second hand goods store Cash Converters may have access to the account details of thousands of customers. Usernames, passwords, delivery addresses and potentially partial credit card numbers are among the data believed to have been stolen. The culprits are said to be holding the…
UK: Nursing auxiliary fined for unlawfully accessing patient records
And while we’re talking about insider breaches, here’s a case from the U.K. From the Information Commissioner’s Office: A nursing auxiliary has been fined for accessing a patient’s medical records without a valid legal reason. Marian Waddell, 61, was working at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport when she unlawfully accessed the records of the…
Ca: Pharmacist Given Conditional Sentence for Health Information Breaches
Protenus’s monthly breach barometer reports attempt to hammer home the need to address and prevent insider breaches. The problem is not unique to the U.S.. Here’s a recent case out of Canada: A pharmacist pleaded guilty to accessing health information in contravention of the Health Information Act (HIA) and received a conditional sentence order on October 16,…