Stolen Flash Drive Exposes Data of 1,200 University of Miami Patients
A security breach exposing the data of over 1,200 patients has recently been disclosed by the University of Miami. The Miller School of Medicine patient data was stolen back in November 2011, together with a flash drive, when someone broke into a pathologist’s car and took the briefcase where the portable device was stored.
The flash drive contained details such as age, sex, diagnosis and treatment information for patients treated from 2005 to 2011, the University of Miami disclosed in a press release. No financial information or Social Security numbers had been stored on the drive, according to the same press release. Read more
Stolen laptop and flash drive expose 7,000 to data theft
The Kansas Department on Aging has recently reported a hardware theft that caused a data breach affecting about 7,000 of its customers. A laptop, a flash drive and paper files were stolen out of an employee’s vehicle, putting thousands of senior customers at risk.
The stolen files contained personal and protected health information belonging mainly to customers located in Sedgwick, Harvey, and Butler counties. The theft was immediately reported to the Wichita Police Department. The Kansas Department on Aging says it is cooperating with the police, but the stolen hardware has not yet been recovered. Read more
Data breach exposes records of 1.8 million New York utilities customers
A data breach affecting 1.8 million customers of two New York utilities companies has recently been made public by the New York State Public Service Commission. The investigation into this data breach was initiated after an employee from a third party IT company contracted by New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) and Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) was given unauthorized access to the company’s databases.
It is not clear if accessing the customer databases had any malicious intent, both affected companies claiming there was no proof of any data having been misused as a consequence of the breach. But, to stay on the safe side, they have decided to send out notifications regarding the data access, as it exposed Social Security Numbers, dates of birth and financial account information, as shown in the official press release sent out by the NY Commission. Read more
Zappos and Amazon face consequences of data breach
When you are the lead artist of a security mishaps that ended up in a data breach affecting some 24 million people, consequences are bound to catch up with you. And they just have caught up with shoe retailer Zappos.com and the bigger online fish behind them, Amazon.com. The two companies are being sued by the customers affected by the data breach, being accused of negligence.
A woman from Texas seems to be the main promoter in this Kentucky lawsuit. She claims that she and millions of other customers were harmed by the exposure of their personal account information. Zappos and Amazon have not commented on the lawsuit as of earlier today. Read more
Ramnit worm steals 45000 Facebook users’ credentials
The Ramnit worm, first discovered a year and a half ago, a malware that used to target online banking and FTP credentials, makes victims among UK and French Facebook users.
A new version of the worm managed to steal more than 45000 Facebook usernames and passwords and tried to attack the e-mail accounts and virtual private networks of affected persons. The worm has sent malicious links to victims’ friends, links that downloaded malware to the person’s computer, which helped spread the worm even faster.
It seems like the attackers are adapting to market tendencies, targeting social networks rather than traditional communication means (such as email).
For more details, you can read the techweekeurope.co.uk report.
Healthcare data breaches on the rise and costing billions
Based on the many stories about data breaches reported by organizations in the healthcare industry, from hospitals to insurance companies and other third-party companies that deal with healthcare data, we could have guessed this is not even close to being a top sector when it comes to data security. A new report released by the Ponemon Institute now brings even further insight into the state of the healthcare industry, showing a spike in data breaches of over 30% and average annual costs of 6.5 billion US dollars.
The “2011 Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy and Data Security,” commissioned by IDExperts, idendified employee error to be one of the main cause for data breaches in hospitals and healthcare providers. These types of organizations in the healthcare industry suffered an average of four data breaches in the past year. Nearly 30 percent of healthcare companies said the breaches they suffered resulted in medical identity theft – an over 25 percent increase over 2010. Read more
British authorities experienced 1,035 data loss incidents
Only 55 of the data loss breaches have actually been reported
If you can’t stop data breaches, at least cover them up! This seems to be the data security code British authorities go by. Too bad for them there is something called Freedom of Information Act requests… A new report issued by privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch showed that councils across the UK experienced over a thousand data loss cases over a three year period – August 2008 to August 2011.
To get the information, the group sent 433 FOIs to local authorities and councils across the Great Britain and showed s shocking discrepancy between the reported 50 something incidents and the harsh reality. Not only did BBW uncover the data mishandling cases, they also requested information on what happened to the employees of said councils – if they had been disciplined, fired or prosecuted over the data breaches -, and inquired about the council’s response to each incident. Read more
Steam hit by hackers. Are all their 35 million user accounts breached?
Almost two weeks ago, we revealed the major changes that had happened this year in the major data breaches top of all times. 2011 was leading in what the number of high profile of breaches is concerned. The top might change once more, ensuring an even stronger position for the current year as hackers hit Steam, a gaming giant that is home to 35 million user accounts.
What we know so far is that the Steam customer data base has been indeed accessed by hackers.
“We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of Steam parent company Valve. “This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information.”
UK’s ICO takes serious measures to enforce data protection
The ICO conducted an investigation on a case of hardware loss in May at the Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council. The incident consisted in the loss of an unencrypted memory stick by a Council’s finance department employee, stick which contained names, addresses and payment details for 18.000 residents. The missing hardware was not found to the date.
The investigation concluded that the Rochdale Council has breached the Data Protection Act by not providing employees with encrypted memory sticks (although it was a known fact that these devices would be used to transfer private information) and by not training their employees to properly use portable devices for work purposes.
Sally Anne Poole, ICO’s head of enforcement qualifies this mishap as ‘unacceptable’ and says ‘This incident could have been easily avoided if adequate security measures had been in place.’ in a quote by eWeek.
The measures taken by the ICO in this case consist of signing an undertaking of actions to take to implement data protection policies by 31st March 2012.
Let’s hope that more than one private data handling organization learns from this incident and encrypts their portable devices using proper solutions.
The theft of laptops doesn’t stop, organizations don’t learn their lesson
A whole lot was written on loss/theft of hardware (laptops, USB sticks, external hard drives, etc.) and we had thought that organizations would learn their lesson and encrypt sensitive data on such supports. Apparently, things aren’t quite like that and two recent incidents come to prove it.
A resident student at Vancouver Coastal Health lost a laptop and a USB stick (there is a high probability that the hardware was stolen) at the Toronto Airport. The information stored on the drives was password protected but it wasn’t encrypted.
A Vancouver Coastal Health official calls the incident ‘unfortunate’ and says that ‘This is the way physicians and other health care workers need to do their job. They need to use these devices.’ He admits that many professionals use laptops and that the agency has some issues handling mobile technologies.
Another mishap took place in the United Kingdom and the theft of a laptop that stored personal information of 100 young people who participated in inclusion programs. This laptop was in the house of a contractor of the Newcastle Youth Offending Team organization. The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) has established a fine for this organization for not encrypting the data. According to Sally-Anne Poole ‘Encryption is a basic procedure and an inexpensive way to ensure that information is kept secure.’ She underlines the fact that organizations working with contractors must make sure that the latter ones align to their security policies.
It’s so simple and cheap to track the use of portable devices and encrypt sensitive data stored on them, that we really ask ourselves why don’t organizations do it?
Let’s hope that at least legal constraints will force private data handlers to implement solutions and politics to maintain their data safe and secure.
