Rick Earle reports: An exclusive Target 11 investigation into a massive data breach last year has led to a new state law meant to protect every citizen of the Commonwealth. Target 11 Investigator Rick Earle broke the story of that data breach last April and now because of his reporting, state lawmakers passed legislation requiring timely notification of…
Category: Of Note
New South Wales gets first state-based data breach notice scheme
Justin Hendry reports: New South Wales will have Australia’s first mandatory data breach notification scheme for public sector entities in place within a year after state government legislation passed Parliament. The Privacy and Personal Information Protection Amendment Bill underpinning the long-promised regime sailed through the Legislative Council last night without amendment, having passed the Legislative Assembly…
Five Former Methodist Hospital Employees Charged with HIPAA Violations
Criminal prosecutions under HIPAA are still relatively rare. Here’s one reported by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Tennessee on November 10: Memphis, TN – A federal grand jury has indicted five former Methodist Hospital employees for conspiring with Roderick Harvey, 40, to unlawfully disclose patient information in violation of the Health Insurance…
U.K.: Suffolk police publish sensitive info of sexual assault victims online in data protection failure
Why would other victims ever come forward and report their assaults when they cannot trust the police to protect their reports? This is an appalling breach, and an “investigation” isn’t going to undo any harm that has been done. What exactly is going to be done to mitigate harm to the victims of this data…
UK: Hacked evidence and stolen data swamp English courts
Franz Wild, Ed Siddons, Simon Lock, Jonathan Calvert, and George Arbuthnott report: A multimillion-pound high court case between an authoritarian Gulf emirate and an Iranian-American businessman has revealed how hacked evidence is being used by leading law firms to advance their clients’ claims. It includes allegations that a former Metropolitan Police officer hired Indian hackers…
Scammers Are Extorting Parents With Their Dead Children’s Nude Images, FBI Says
Thomas Brewster reports: Sextortion scammers have become increasingly ruthless, targeting families of teenage victims who took their own lives after sending nude images to highly organized cybercriminal gangs, the FBI has warned. The gangs have demanded that parents or siblings pay to ensure that the sexualized photos of their deceased relatives are not publicly released,…