Catalin Cimpanu reports: A former Equifax engineer who coded parts of the company’s breach notification website for last year’s security incident was sentenced this week to eight months of home confinement and restitution of ill-gotten funds after using insider information about the Equifax breach to make over $75,000 from insider trading. The sentence was passed…
Category: Of Note
Anthem Pays OCR $16 Million in Record HIPAA Settlement Following Largest U.S. Health Data Breach in History
From HHS/OCR, this record-setting announcement: Anthem, Inc. has agreed to pay $16 million to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and take substantial corrective action to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules after a series of cyberattacks led…
AU: School students’ private medical details leaked in Google sync privacy mess
Here’s what appears to be a serious breach involving Google drive and syncing. Henrietta Cook reports: Confidential files detailing high school students’ medical conditions, including anxiety issues and those at risk of suicide, have been found on a Melbourne schoolgirl’s iPad. The document contains photos, names and medical and family details of years 7 to 12…
Escaping Notice, by Laying Low
HIPAA lawyer Matt Fisher has a thoughtful commentary inspired by an OCR investigation first reported on this site. Unlike the FTC who have tended to demand 20-year monitoring plans as part of their settlements with entities that have data security breaches, OCR tends to use a more educative approach without monetary penalties or long-term monitoring in…
Alibaba passes blame for Alipay thefts to Apple
Asia Times reports: Chinese tech giant Alibaba warned users on Wednesday that they could be at risk from making cashless transactions or paying bills with its Alipay application on Apple gadgets, stressing that the security loophole was not the fault of its app but of the US firm. An Apple security breach was blamed by…
Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public
Douglas MacMillan and Robert McMillan report: Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage, according to people briefed on the…