Andy Newman reports that police suspect an H & R Block employee of misusing customer data to obtain fraudulent refunds. Former customers who have been affected filed a lawsuit against H & R Block this week. Read more in the New York Times.
Nursing home patient information found in residents’ yards
Amber Parcher reports: Montgomery County’s Department of Health and Human Services is looking into how numerous Wheaton nursing home papers containing sensitive patient information have made their way into nearby neighbors’ yards over the past few months. Last month, the county sent a nursing home inspector to investigate complaints from residents in the Wheaton Regional…
HBDirect.com customers notified of hack
HBDirect.com suspects that its web site was breached and that customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and credit card numbers were stolen. In a letter to those affected which is not the typical letter I’m used to reading, company principal Paul Ballyk not only explained what an SQL injection attack is, but noted that…
HSE cited over lax data security
Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes has called on the Health Service Executive to make improving the security of its systems for transferring patient data a top priority. Click here to read the full report In his annual report for 2009, Mr Hawkes also expressed concern at, what he called, ‘the reluctance of some State bodies…
BofA insider to plead guilty to hacking ATMs
Robert McMillan reports: A Bank of America computer specialist is set to plead guilty to charges that he hacked the bank’s automated tellers to dispense cash without recording the activity. Rodney Reed Caverly, of Charlotte, North Carolina, is scheduled to plead guilty to a computer fraud charge next Tuesday in federal court in Charlotte, according…
Data breaches to cost more in the cloud
Liz Tay reports: Remedying a data breach costs 40 percent more for businesses that store their data offshore, a study of Australian incidents has found. Conducted by the Ponemon Institute and PGP Corporation, the inaugural Australian Cost of a Data Breach report aimed to quantify the costs associated with public and private sector data breaches….