Emily Blake reports: More than 1,000 NWT residents had private information regarding their student loans mistakenly shared in an email from the Department of Education, Culture, and Employment earlier this year. According to a notice sent on behalf of the deputy minister of the department to those affected, information on the amount of interest they…
11th Circuit Upholds Historic $380 Million Equifax Data-Breach Settlement
Izzy Kapnick reports: A three-judge panel for the 11th Circuit on Thursday upheld the largest-ever U.S. class action settlement over a consumer data breach, rejecting a bevy of challenges to the $380 million deal. Finalized in January 2020, the settlement compensates U.S. consumers whose personal information was exposed in a cyberattack on the credit bureau Equifax. The…
Document Leak Puts Ex-Treasury Official Away 6 Months
Emilee Larkin reports: A federal judge handed a six-month prison sentence Thursday to a former Treasury official who painted herself as a whistleblower for leaking government records about targets of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. “I understand she viewed herself as a whistleblower,” U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods said at the hearing this afternoon in Manhattan….
DOJ Announces New Guidance Tackling Ransomware Attacks
Kaila Philo reports that in the wake of some big ransomware attacks, DOJ has issued new guidance. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco released an internal memo late Thursday detailing new guidance on how to tackle cyber-attacks as a result. These recent ransomware attacks “underscore the growing threat that ransomware and digital extortion pose to the Nation, and…
Uk: ‘A scandal’ – Boxes of patient medical records found in abandoned care home
Sabrina Johnson reports: Dozens of confidential patient records, staff notes and sensitive files have been found in a derelict unsecured Norfolk care home, in what has been branded a “serious breach” of data protection. Pine Heath nursing home in High Kelling, near Holt, closed suddenly in May 2017 after it was placed in special measures after being…
Diverse six-justice majority rejects broad reading of computer-fraud law
Ronald Mann writes: The Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday in Van Buren v. United States provides the court’s first serious look at one of the most important criminal statutes involving computer-related crime, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion for a majority 0f six firmly rejected the broad reading of that statute that the…