David Braue writes: Notification of data breaches should be one of the four key steps organisations undertake in response to any detected breach, new guidelines from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recommend. The new guidelines – recently published in the OAIC’s Data Breach Notification Guide – are designed to help companies comply with the…
Tech Firms Ask Congress to Redefine Medical Privacy Rules
Kerry Young reports: Tech firms, including Amazon.com Inc., are asking Congress to redefine the rules on medical privacy, saying the potential risks of disclosure should be weighed again against the potential benefits of wider sharing and easier access to crucial health data. Executives of tech companies and health organizations have told the House Energy and…
Home Depot Confirms Data Breach
From their web site today: Last Tuesday, September 2, we disclosed that we were investigating a possible breach of our payment data systems. We want you to know that we have now confirmed that those systems have in fact been breached, which could potentially impact any customer that has used their payment card at our…
SC: Some Dorn V.A. Hospital veterans' information may be compromised
WLTX reports: The Dorn Veterans Administration Hospital in Columbia says some old records are missing, and is warning veterans that their personal information could be compromised. According to Dorn officials, four boxes of pathology reports that were stored in a locked area in the medical center laboratory are gone. The loss of the records was…
Home Depot Hit By Same Malware as Target
Brian Krebs reports: The apparent credit and debit card breach uncovered last week at Home Depot was aided in part by a new variant of the same malicious software program that stole card account data from cash registers at Target last December, according to sources close to the investigation. […] A source close to the…
Earthquake data privacy breach ‘avoidable’
Charles Anderson reports: A review of the Earthquake Commission’s handling of the privacy breach that revealed the details of all Canterbury claimants found the error could have been avoided. The breach might not have happened if EQC had learned lessons from a similar breach at another government agency, the review said. In early 2013, 83,000…