Chung Ah-young reports: The financial regulator said Sunday that it may impose additional penalties on officials responsible for large-scale data thefts that occurred earlier this year. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said that it will hold a disciplinary review committee meeting on Oct. 2 to discuss the severity of sanctions towards executives and employees of…
Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable
Julie Creswell and Nicole Perlroth report: The risks were clear to computer experts inside Home Depot: The home improvement chain, they warned for years, might be easy prey for hackers. But despite alarms as far back as 2008, Home Depot was slow to raise its defenses, according to former employees. Read more on NY Times….
California Supreme Court to Hear Privacy Challenge to Prescription Database Statute
Kenneth Ofgang reports: The California Supreme Court has agreed to determine whether healthcare regulators violated the state Constitution’s privacy clause when they accessed a local doctor’s prescribing records as part of an investigation into claims of unprofessional conduct. The justices, at their weekly conference in San Francisco Wednesday, voted 5-0 to review the ruling of…
FL: Tax refund fraud scheme involved two insiders misusing databases
WTXL reports that five people have been indicted in a tax refund fraud scheme that included two employees misusing their access to databases. One of those indicted, Katrina Pratt, had been an administrative assistant in human resources at Florida A & M University (FAMU), and allegedly used the identities of 40 students there as part…
Top official fired for records security breach at St. Louis Recorder of Deeds office
Adam McDonald reports: A top official in the St. Louis Recorder of Deeds Office has been fired for a vital records security breach of about 19,000 unauthorized copies of death certificates. The acting Recorder of Deeds, Jennifer Florida, says Preggy Meeker, the alleged suspect, allowed employees to log into Missouri’s vital records system by using…
Oh, so that's what happened?
One of the (all too many) frustrations with trying to learn from HHS’s public breach tool is that they do not let us know when they’ve updated an older entry or closed an investigation. In December of 2012, I had reported three additions to the breach tool for which I could find no information online….