David Braue reports: The latest study of data-breach costs found Australian businesses bucking global trends by driving down the average cost of data breaches. There was little shelter for CISOs however, with warnings that they could increasingly risk losing their jobs if they can’t improve their reporting of security postures before the breaches happen. Might be time to not…
Ca: 77K accounts of Financial Giant, State Farm, leaked due to DAC Group Hack
Ryan de Souza reports: DAC Group, a Toronto-based digital & content marketing agency has suffered a security breach on their server resulting in data theft of 93,000 customer accounts — In normal circumstances it would be just another security breach but what makes this breach exceptional is the 77,000 leaked accounts from Bloomington, Illinois-based State Farm,…
Ca: Empire Life notifies customers of data breach
I don’t understand: if they detected and responded to this phishing incident in November, 2015, why are they first issuing this statement now? June 17, 2016 (Toronto, Ontario) – The Empire Life Insurance Company (Empire Life) announced today that the company is responding to a data breach that may affect a number of its customers. On…
Janesville computer systems hit by virus, likely ‘ransomware’
Jessica Arp reports: Janesville (Wisconsin) officials said they’re still working to recover after a computer virus attacked their network last week. Information Technology Manager Gordy LaChance said it was caused by multiple employees opening compromised emails that immediately started gathering and reorganizing files in their system. Both emails looked like they were from businesses that…
Monsanto Says Worker Stole Data
Jacob Bunge reports: Monsanto Co. sued a former computer programmer, alleging he stole proprietary files after resigning to explore a job at a Chinese seed company. The lawsuit comes as the agriculture industry’s embrace of high-tech software and analytics, led by big companies like Monsanto and Deere & Co. as well as startups, has opened…
To the anonymous researchers who contacted me
Several weeks ago, I reported that some researchers had contacted me anonymously to give me a slew of vulnerabilities they had uncovered in their research. As a result of the FBI’s over-the-top raid on Justin Shafer, they had become scared of trying to notify entities of what they had found. They left it up to me to decide…