Chiara Albanese reports: Italy’s government is speeding up plans to create a new cybersecurity unit directly under Prime Minister Mario Draghi to shield the country’s digital network from criminal attacks. The new unit will set centralized strategy for cybersecurity and be managed by a committee based in the prime minister’s office, according to a draft…
China Passes Law to Strengthen Control Over Tech Firms’ Data
Bloomberg reports: China’s top legislative body has passed a data security law, strengthening Beijing’s control over digital information amid a crackdown on local technology giants and market access disputes with the U.S. The legislation was approved Thursday by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, state broadcaster China Central Television said. The full text of the…
Meat processor JBS paid $11 million in ransom to hackers.
Rebecca Robbins reports: The world’s largest meat processor said on Wednesday that it paid an $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to the hackers behind an attack that forced the shutdown last week of all the company’s U.S. beef plants and disrupted operations at poultry and pork plants. The company, JBS, said in a statement that the decision…
Hospital worker in Birmingham on COVID ward used dead patient’s bank card to buy crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks from vending machine
Sky News reports: A healthcare assistant working on a COVID ward has been convicted of using a dead patient’s bank card to buy crisps, fizzy drinks and sweets from a hospital vending machine. Ayesha Basharat, 23, took the card from an 83-year-old woman who had recently passed away at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham. A doctor…
Castle Hills police recover stolen IDs, urge residents to check for identity theft
It’s not quite on the order of recovering millions in bitcoin, but in Texas last week, a traffic stop in Castle Hills resulted in the recovery of a number of stolen identification paperwork including “A licenses, passports, checkbooks and also some birth certificates and car titles. Now the police are warning the public to check to…
South Korea’s data watchdog barks warnings at Microsoft and five local firms
Laura Dobberstein reports: Microsoft and five other companies have received fines totaling US$75K from South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), for running afoul of local data protection laws. The Commission fined Microsoft 16.4 million won (US$14,700) for failing to have protective measures on administrative accounts that led to the leak of over 119,000 email accounts, 144…