One of the common themes in discussing security is that many organizations are not “mature” yet. And of course, as HIPAA recognizes in its security rule, smaller practices should not be expected to do everything you might expect a larger hospital system to do. But even small or medium-sized entities need to comply with the core…
Category: Of Note
St. Petersburg timeline on Click2Gov raises questions as to whether the vendor was proactive or not
I have commented on the Click2Gov breach a few times — mostly wondering aloud why so many customers do not seem to have been made aware that they needed to update immediately, etc. Both RBS and FireEye have both discussed the Click2Gov incident in more depth. But now look at this disclosure from St….
You Can’t Understand Cyberattacks Without Understanding Chinese Spies
Bowen Xiao and Joshua Philipp report: In 2014, five Chinese military hackers were indicted for offenses that included computer hacking and economic espionage. The hackers targeted Americans in various industries, such as nuclear and solar, and marked the first time criminal charges were brought against Chinese military hackers for cyberattacks. They were never taken to trial. The individuals were…
UK: Bupa Insurance Services fined £175,000 for systemic data protection failures
From the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office: Bupa Insurance Services Limited (Bupa) has been fined £175,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for failing to have effective security measures in place to protect customers’ personal information. Between 6 January and 11 March 2017, a Bupa employee was able to extract the personal information of 547,000 Bupa…
Facebook Hacked, 50 Million Users Affected
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Jason Koebler report: Facebook disclosed that hackers stole data from 50 million people on Friday. In a blog post, Facebook’s vice president of product management Guy Rosen said that the company’s engineering team “discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts.” “It’s clear that attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code…
Russian hackers ‘Fancy Bear’ now targeting governments with rootkit malware
Zack Whittaker reports: Security researchers say that they have found evidence that for the first time Russia-backed hackers are now using a more sophisticated type of malware to target government entities. ESET presented its case Thursday that the hacker group, known as Fancy Bear (or APT28), is using rootkit malware to target its victims. That…