Jeffrey A. Peterson, 51, of Freedom, NY, has pleaded guilty to exceeding authorized access to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (NYS DMV) database. The plea was announced Thursday by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York. The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison…
Category: U.S.
CA: Hundreds Of Dental Records Found In Vacant Building
Christine O’Donnell reports that hundreds of dental records with patients’ addresses, insurance information, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and drivers license numbers were found in what appears to be a vacant building in Orange. Of concern, the building has broken windows and homeless people have been observed going in and out of it for a while…
More police departments acknowledge paying ransom to unlock their systems
And yet more police departments pay ransom to unlock their systems. WCSH in Maine reports: Lincoln County Sheriff Todd Brackett said four towns and the county have a special computer network to share files and records. Someone accidentally downloaded a virus, called “megacode”, that put an encryption code on all the computer data. The Sheriff…
Walters McCann Fanska notifies clients of network security breach
Kansas City-based accounting firm Walters McCann Fanska is notifying clients that their personal and financial account information may have been acquired by a hacker or hackers who had access to the firm’s network from sometime late last year until late February 2015. To their credit, the firm noticed suspicious activity with some accounts at the end…
The train wreck that was (is?) Pasco County School District’s IT security
I continue to look for details on the case of a 14-year old middle school student who is facing two felony counts for allegedly hacking into his district’s network (see previous coverage of the case on this blog here and here). In today’s installment of How Badly Can a District Screw Up InfoSecurity? Ashley Feinberg of…
Education Sector Struggles With Botnets: BitSight
As this blog makes painfully clear, the education sector struggles with data security and lags way behind other sectors, in my opinion. Now a new report indicates another area of security where they’re lagging. Brian Prince reports: The education industry – which includes education companies, schools and colleges – brought up the rear in a new…