Jennifer Pierce of News6 reports that an employee of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission lost a flash drive with personal information, including Social Security numbers and payroll information, on 5,500 state employees. The employee had transferred the data to a flash drive after his laptop had become infected, and then lost the flash drive at…
Washington Department of Labor and Industries exposes contractors’ SSN on web site
In an article that requires a subscription for full access, Bert Caldwell of The Spokesman Review reports that the Washington Department of Labor and Industries web site was shut down for several hours yesterday after a contractor realized his Social Security number was exposed and contacted them. A spokesperson said that the problem was a…
Largo marketing firm pays $350,000, settles complaints by Florida attorney general
Lorri Helfand of St. Petersburg Times reports: A Largo area marketing firm has agreed to pay $350,000 to settle a complaint by the Florida Attorney General’s Office that the firm obtained stolen consumer information and did not take proper steps to ensure data was acquired legitimately. Although VICI Marketing LLC agreed to the settlement filed…
EU leaders’ passport numbers and medical info found on public computer in Prague
The Helsinki Times reports that a publicly available computer at a Prague hotel contained the passport numbers and itineraries of about 200 leaders from EU member states who gathered there April 5 for an EU-US summit. The breach has been attributed to human error. The breach was discovered by a Finnish tourist who used the…
FairPoint probes on security breach
FairPoint Communications Inc. says a worker’s failure to abide by security precautions caused a portable data-storage device containing employee information to disappear from an undisclosed FairPoint office. The device contained information for all current FairPoint employees and some former employees, or about 4,400 individuals in total. Such data may have included names, home addresses and…
HK: Data of 15,000 NUS alumni leaked
Tan Weizhen reports: Computer security is being beefed up across the National University of Singapore (NUS) after sensitive data of more than 15,000 alumni members was leaked in an e-mail. On April1, the NUS Career Centre sent an e-mail to about 450 NUS alumni, all of whom graduated last year, to invite them to a…