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Data Breaches

Unencrypted hospital laptop exposes 2k patient records

Greg Masters May 23, 2012

An employee of the Boston Children's Hospital lost a laptop holding patient information.

IT head fired, ombudsman hired in wake of Utah breach

Dan Kaplan May 16, 2012

An apologetic governor of Utah on Tuesday announced the resignation of the state's executive director of technology services, and the hiring of two others, following a massive breach affecting Medicaid claimants.

ID thieves find gold in medical data

Illena Armstrong May 01, 2012

Is health care a last frontier for today's cyber criminals?

Health hazard: SC Magazine Roundtable

Illena Armstrong May 01, 2012

Health care traditionally, compared with other industries, has lagged in terms of cyber defense, but with attackers now specifically targeting these organizations for patient data, inaction is no longer an option.

Network visibility: Your PR department's best friend

Tim Nichols, VP of global marketing at Endace April 17, 2012

For a large-listed corporation, a security breach is arguably one of your worst, although inevitable public relations nightmares.

Duke Medicine patients' information compromised

Roo Howar April 16, 2012

Statements containing confidential information were filed by Duke University Health System (DUHS) as part of patients' bankruptcy actions.

Connecticut community college hit with "zero-day" malware

Roo Howar April 13, 2012

Eighty-seven thousand people affiliated with Housatonic Community College may be open to identity theft after the institution became the second Connecticut school to experience a malware outbreak this year.

Visa warns of phone phishing after Global Payments breach

Dan Kaplan April 11, 2012

Visa is advising its customers to be wary of phone scams in which fraudsters request their credit card information under the guise that they need it for "security reasons" in light of the major data breach that affected Global Payments, according to a Tuesday alert from Visa.

Number of victims in state of Utah breach significantly rises

Dan Kaplan April 09, 2012

A misconfigured server is to blame for the attack, which impacted roughly 780,000 Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Plan recipients.

LulzSec hacker reverses guilty plea for Sony Pictures attack

Dan Kaplan April 05, 2012

An accused member of the hacktivist group LulzSec pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles to charges of hacking into the systems of Sony Pictures Entertainment, according to reports.

Hackers target Medicaid claim forms in Utah

Dan Kaplan April 05, 2012

Hackers, believed to be operating out of Eastern Europe, breached a server at the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) to access thousands of Medicaid records.

Visa expels Global Payments following 1.5M-card breach

Dan Kaplan April 02, 2012

Global Payments, a major credit card processor based in Atlanta, is off Visa's approved list after it confirmed it was breached of some 1.5 million card numbers. The incident, however, is still shrouded in some mystery.

Big Data: The big picture

Dan Kaplan April 02, 2012

With data proliferating at astonishing rates, organizations are tearing into it, hoping to derive new business value, which, according to Zions CSO Preston Wood, includes better security decision making.

Military dating website says LulzSec hack didn't happen

Dan Kaplan March 29, 2012

A military dating website, which a band of hackers claimed this week to successfully infiltrate to pillage members' personal information, was not actually hacked, according to its administrator.

RockYou to pay FTC $250K after breach of 32M passwords

Dan Kaplan March 27, 2012

The FTC seemed most upset with RockYou's failure to protect the personal information of 179,000 children who registered to use the site.

LulzSec redux dumps data after raiding military dating site

Dan Kaplan March 27, 2012

Hackers calling themselves "LulzSec Reborn" have claimed responsibility for two breaches that resulted in the dumping of personal information.

TRICARE breach victims report financial fraud

Marcos Colon March 23, 2012

Victims of the TRICARE breach have experience financial fraud, leading to an amended complaint filed against the Defense Department.

Michigan union employees' data exposed

Greg Masters March 22, 2012

The personal information of more than 1,000 public employees of Wayne County, Mich., was exposed when a spreadsheet containing their data was inadvertently attached to an email blast.

University of Tampa sustains breach of Social Security numbers

Dan Kaplan March 21, 2012

The college blames a "server management error" for the public posting of confidential information of tens of thousands of students, faculty and staff.

Data breach costs drop for first time in study

Dan Kaplan March 20, 2012

Organizations now pay an average of $194 per breached record, the first time the annual Symantec-Ponemon Institute "Cost of a Data Breach Study" noted a drop since its inception in 2006.

BlueCross fine over breach related to HIPAA notification rule

Marcos Colon March 15, 2012

The BlueCross BlueShield settlement with the Office for Civil Rights is a reminder for health care organizations to bolster their data security, experts said.

Porn site Digital Playground hacked to expose card numbers

Dan Kaplan March 09, 2012

Online hackers have compromised two adult websites, including the very popular YouPorn, in recent weeks, apparently to highlight weak security.

Opinion: The password is dead

Curtis Staker, president and CEO, Confident Technologies • March 01, 2012

The massive fallout from the breaches of Gawker, Sony and others involving weak password authentication schemes show that the current password system is dead.

An abusive relationship

Dan Kaplan March 01, 2012

No single reported breach in recent memory better highlighted the risk that vulnerable third-parties present than when hackers last year raided Epsilon.

RSA Conference 2012: Breaches help in C-suite communication

Greg Masters February 29, 2012

The corner offices are finally perking up to the need for security, so now security professionals need to smarten up on how to best reach them.

Hacking now responsible for most of exposed records

Dan Kaplan February 27, 2012

Until last year, lost and stolen laptops were to blame for the largest percentage of breach types. Now, hacking has claimed the top spot.

Patient data available on Google, Yahoo due to security mishap

Dan Kaplan February 23, 2012

The health records of more than 30,000 patients at five California hospitals may have been publicly accessible via search engines due to improper server configurations.

Podcast: The probability of a data breach lawsuit

Dan Kaplan February 17, 2012

If a data breach occurs, when are companies more likely to be sued by consumers or employees? A Carnegie Mellon University researcher joined me on the SC Magazine Podcast to discuss.

Stratfor subscribers targeted by malware-ridden emails

Dan Kaplan February 14, 2012

A letter addressed to the stolen email addresses of Stratfor customers claims to be a helpful reminder of malware scams, but is actually bait to spread the Zbot trojan.

Breaches aided by weak passwords, poor AV detection

Dan Kaplan February 09, 2012

Trustwave's annual review of its data breach response investigations concluded that franchises are now the prime target for hackers seeking customer data, such as credit card numbers.