A file containing the personal information of current and former Colorado State University-Pueblo students was accessed last spring by unauthorized users.
In a report released this week, the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the EPA, which just announced a server breach resulting in the personal information compromise of 7,800 people, is falling short in several areas.
The personal medical data of nearly 13,000 students and staff at Canada's British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) may have been exposed.
Thousands of patients of Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Fla. may be at risk for identity theft after two former employees improperly accessed their records.
A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling has said employees who violate their organization's user policies do not violate the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
A favorite whipping boy of the Government Accountability Office, the Internal Revenue Service has yet to clean up its security act, though improvements continue, according to a new audit.
December 13, 2011
Identity and access management programs are quite tricky to scale across an organization, but implementing a governance team can go a long way to effectively using the technology to meet compliance and manage user permissions.
As long as we want to allow some users access and deny others, these products will be with us.
Despite repeated warnings from the GAO, the IRS has not done much to improve its security posture, and the tax collector was chastised in yet another federal audit.
Facebook on Thursday introduced two new security features to help users better protect their accounts. The first is the ability to create unique passwords for each application a user accesses. (Normally they only need to enter in their standard Facebook credentials). The new capability allows members to create a password, which they won't have to remember each time they login to the app, by visiting Account Settings>Security>App Passwords. Meanwhile, the "Trusted Friends" feature allows a user to select three to five trusted individuals to serve as custodians of codes that can be used to access one's account if he or she is ever locked out.
An Australian government agency that instituted patching, whitelisting and account control as the foundation of its targeted attack defense took home a U.S. award from the SANS Institute.
The attacks, which occurred at four department locations, were not described in detail, but were deemed "successful" for adversaries, according to the annual audit.
Agencies reported a total of 41,776 cybersecurity incidents, compared to just 5,503 in 2006, according to a new GAO report.
September 01, 2011
Stuxnet demonstrated that even isolated physical networks could be hacked.
UCLA Health System must pay $865,500 as part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over complaints that employees snooped on the health records of two celebrities.
Thirty-two employees were fired from two hospitals in Minnesota after they viewed electronic records belonging to patients who were hospitalized after overdosing at a house party, according to a report in the Minnesota Star-Tribune. The employees, who worked at Unity Hospital in Fridley and Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, do have access to certain records, but in this instance, had no legitimate reason to view the documents. As hospitals transition to electronic health care records, more instances of unauthorized access, such as cases last year in California, have cropped up.
Facebook is rolling out two-factor authentication to fight against the possibility of unauthorized account access.
A major U.S. energy supplier has found no evidence of breach despite claims by a former employee that he hacked into the company's New Mexico wind turbine facility as revenge for being fired.
The Obama administration released the final version of its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, the goal of which is to create a so-called identity ecosystem where online transactions are more trustworthy.
A former network engineer at Gucci has been charged with hacking into the company's network, deleting data and shutting down servers and networks.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), a nonprofit that produces standards for information and communications technologies, has completed a set of identity management specifications which outline how users can safely gain authorized access to data and services. The free specifications, which are aimed at network operators, internet service providers and systems designers, address access control issues related to third-parties and cloud environments. The specifications were created by ETSI's identity and access management for networks and services group, whose members include Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel Lucent, the University of Patras in Greece, and the University of Murcia in Spain.
Five days after RSA announced that its systems were breached by a sophisticated attack, details remain scant about how customers of its SecurID two-factor authentication products may be affected.
With the tax filing deadline a month away, the IRS is feeling the heat from the U.S. Government Accountability Office over lax data security practices.
February 03, 2011
Monitoring those with access to virtual machines running in the cloud is an important step to successful deployment.
December 22, 2010
Poor authentication standards encourage bad passwords and enable the data breach at Gawker to harm security across the web.
December 01, 2010
The financial crisis will have a lasting impact, but some organizations have found ways of doing more with less.
Facebook on Thursday announced the launch of a new security feature that allows members to log out of any active sessions from a central control. The function is aimed at users who may have accidentally remained logged in when using a computer or mobile device that wasn't their own. However, according to a Facebook Security blog post, the feature also can be used to sign off individuals who may have gained unauthorized access to an account. The new tool complements a feature announced in May that allows users to approve the devices that can access their accounts. — DK
August 30, 2010
Continuing its cloud computing buying spree, IT management software provider CA Technologies announced Monday that it plans to acquire authentication solutions provider Arcot for $200 million.
August 26, 2010
Entitlement reporting can help organizations control risk and meet compliance mandates, while accounting for employee access.
July 20, 2010
Many organizations may be considering server virtualization, but next on the horizon is desktop virtualization, which promises to deliver secure remote access and WAN optimization, among other benefits.
