Blog / Data Breach
Huge Security Breaches Discovered
Feb 18, 2010 by Tom Fragala
Computerword is reporting: Security researchers at a company called NetWitness Corp. have unearthed a massive botnet affecting at least 75,000 computers at 2,500 companies and government agencies worldwide. The Kneber botnet, named for the username linking the affected machines worldwide,...
Heartland Announces Massive Data Breach on Inauguration Day
Jan 20, 2009 by Tom Fragala
Heartland Payment Systems announced today, on the morning of Obama's inauguration, what appears to be a colossal data breach of credit card numbers. A coincidence they announced it today? The number of compromised credit card accounts in unknown and was...
Data Breaches Increased by 47% in 2008
Jan 7, 2009 by Tom Fragala
According to the ITRC, reported data breaches increased by nearly half in 2008 compared to 2007. There were 656 reported in 2008 versus 446 in 2007. Mal-attacks, hacking and insider theft, account for 29.6% of those breaches that reported the...
A new shredder to prevent data breaches
Sep 11, 2008 by Tom Fragala
CSO magazine has an article and very cool video about a company that literally shreds hard drives, like you would shred paper (although the shredder is just a bit more beefy). The heart of Corporate Destruction Solutions is a blue beast of...
HR Outsourcer Colt Has Data Stolen, Leaves Victims Cold
Jun 24, 2008 by Tom Fragala
According to PC World, a human resources outsourcing firm called Colt Express Outsourcing, suffered a data breach when thieves stole a number of computers from their offices. Incredibly, Colt did not have an alarm security system (they installed one four...
FTC reaches settlement with TJX
Mar 27, 2008 by Tom Fragala
So the settlement is that TJX has to submit to a total of 10 security audits over the course of 20 years. Which is something they would do anyway most likely. Now, the FTC has limited powers under the FTC...
Did security provider to Hannaford try to erase ties?
Mar 20, 2008 by Tom Fragala
My favorite ID theft/security/privacy blog, Fraudwar by Ed Dickson, has a post about a security company that has Hannaford as a customer. Hannaford being the folks that just suffered a data breach of 4.2 million credit/debit accounts. In typical blog...
Supermarket company Hannaford reports data breach of 4.2 million accounts
Mar 17, 2008 by Tom Fragala
The Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain said a breach of its computer system led to the theft of about 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers from its Hannaford and Sweetbay stores and other locations. Hannaford, based in Maine, said...
Data Security Breach Report by ITRC
Feb 7, 2008 by Tom Fragala
The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) has released its 2007 Breach Report. They also maintain an ongoing 2008 Breach Report. In 2007, ITRC documented 448 paper and electronic breaches, potentially affecting more than 127 million records. This is a significant...
GE Money Loses Data on 650,000 JC Penney Credit Card Holders
Jan 18, 2008 by Tom Fragala
As a former IT professional, something particularly disturbing about this is that the data breach occurred because of an apparent lost backup tape at the well-known data storage company, Iron Mountain. This just should not happen--this company specializes in data...
Data Breach: Every Family With Kids in the UK
Nov 20, 2007 by Tom Fragala
This may sound hard to believe but a UK government agency lost data on every family in the UK with children under age 16. You read that right. 25 million people, 7 million familes. Two computer discs holding the personal...
TJX Data Breach Was Far Worse - 96 Million Accounts
Oct 24, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Court documents disclose that 96 million Visa and Mastercard accounts (credit and debit) were “impacted” by the TJX data breach. Jaw-dropping numbers, almost hard to believe. I wonder what they mean by “impacted.” Despite TJX having reported some 46 million...
TJ Maxx (TJX) Controversial Data Breach Lawsuit Settlement
Sep 25, 2007 by Tom Fragala
In case you had not heard yet, TJ Maxx has made an offer to settle class action lawsuits over the enormous security breach they suffered recently (45 million customer accounts compromised). They offer credit monitoring to just 10% of the...
Identity Theft via File Sharing Peer to Peer Network
Sep 6, 2007 by Tom Fragala
This is the first case I am aware of where someone was arrested for committing ID theft through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, which are popular software and services for getting media including pirated movies, games and music. The story from PC...
Another stolen laptop and retirees take the hit again
Aug 23, 2007 by Tom Fragala
I rarely post about data breaches anymore, because there are so many. But did you noticed that it seems more often than not, it’s retiree data that is stolen or lost? Here we have yet another laptop stolen, this time...
Massachusetts ID Theft Bill Includes Credit Freezes
Aug 4, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Massachusetts finally got an ID theft prevention bill passed and signed into law. It includes credit freezes (for victims and non-victims), data breach notification requirements, and destruction of documents with sensitive data. Unforunately, none of the stories I saw state...
An Uncreative Plan from the Presidential Identity Theft Task Force
Jun 10, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
An article criticized the Presidential Identity Theft Task Force for some of the issues we’ve been blogging about for a while. The article sums up the report of the task force’s findings as this: The report focuses on four main...
Truston Offers Discounted Upgrade for LifeLock Customers
Jun 4, 2007 by Tom Fragala
We issued a press release this morning (read it here). Here is an explanation of what it is about. Last week, there was a shocking article about LifeLock by Ray Stern in the Phoenix New Times. Truston understands that their customers (and...
Oops! Medical Center Exposes Patients to Identity Theft (Again)
May 31, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) sent donation solicitation letters to thousands of its former patients. Unfortunately, the patients’ social security number appeared through the window of the envelope. Yikes! Oddly enough, UPMC didn’t learn its lesson from a previous mishap. ...
Not Again?!?
May 20, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
The newly merged Alcatel-Lucent just announced a similar mishap to IBM’s – which I recently blogged about. Employees of Alcatel-Lucent and retirees of Lucent have been notified that an unencrypted CD has been reported missing. The disc was prepared by Hewitt Associates,...
Shame on IBM!
May 18, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
IBM is one of the leaders in encryption software and other data management technologies so it’s very surprising that their retirees’ data has been compromised. It happened when the human resources department’s back-up tapes were transported by a contractor from...
TSA Loses Hard Drive with 100,000 Employees' Social Security Numbers
May 6, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has lost a computer hard drive with information on 100,000 of its past and present employees. The files of TSA employees from January of 2002 to August of 2005 were on the hard drive with records of...
Quite a Slip Up: Lube Maker Feels Data Breach Pain
Apr 24, 2007 by Tom Fragala
This is what happens when a web developer doesn’t know what they are doing… More than 250,000 people's names and addresses are now naked on the web after the maker of a popular sexual lubricant called Astroglide accidentally exposed lists...
Shouldn't the Victims Be Compensated?
Apr 19, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
An article appeared on the NetWork World website about a CVS Pharmacy in Texas facing fines for throwing valuable customer information into a dumpster behind the store. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it certainly won’t be the...
A Mistake From The White House May Lead to Identity Theft
Apr 2, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
You can only do so much to prevent identity theft. Take this article from US News and World Report, for example. A mundane trip manifest of reporters who traveled to Latin America with President Bush has turned colossally controversial because...
Identity Thieves Target The Dead
Mar 29, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Identity thieves will swoop in on the dead because for them, the best identity theft victim is one that no longer needs his credit and won't ever realize it's been stolen! Here's how one thief in Louisiana managed to grab...
Utility Worker Charged With ID Theft
Mar 25, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Here's a chilling reminder that you can never be too careful - but sometimes you don't have a choice. This utility worker had access to all kinds of information for each customer and she chose to help herself to at...
Credit Card Industry Says Restaurants are Data Sieve
Mar 24, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Electronic payment processors, including Visa and Mastercard, say that restaurants are the biggest source of credit card data breaches and security leaks. In a way, no surprise since there are millions of restaurants, many of which are small operations, that...
Symantec Reports on Internet Threats--Your Identity at Risk
Mar 24, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Symantec released its Internet Security Threat Report and it includes information about how hackers are selling personal data including complete “identities” for under $20. Infoworld has the story. The data is sold on so-called "underground economy servers," used by criminal organizations...
CA State Website Publishing Social Security Numbers
Mar 23, 2007 by Tom Fragala
California, which prides itself on being the most privacy-friendly state, gave its residents an unpleasant surprise today. It was discovered that a California state web site had been exposing people’s Social Security numbers for years. The SSNs were including on...
Tax-Preparers Can Leave You Wide Open to ID Theft
Mar 9, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
When you hand over your paperwork to your tax-preparer, you may get more than you bargained for. Let's face it, you've just given all the information an identity thief needs to hijack your identity. How do you know that your documents...
WSJ: Skimming Fraud Gets More Sophisticated
Mar 8, 2007 by Tom Fragala
The Wall Street Journal has a story on skimming devices on point-of-sale systems like the fraud scheme which happened at the Stop & Shop stores recently. The article highlights the weaknesses at the POS at retail locations. Another reminder to...
Mass. Considers Law Making Retailers Liable for Data Theft
Feb 21, 2007 by Tom Fragala
In response to the massive data breach at TJX, parent company of TJ Maxx, lawmakers in Massachusetts are mulling over a new law. It would force retailers to take responsibility for security breaches. WSJ has the story.> If it passes, and...
TJX Data Breach Worse Than Originally Feared
Feb 21, 2007 by Tom Fragala
CNet.com reports, The breach of credit and debit card data was initially thought to have lasted from May 2006 to January. However, TJX said Wednesday that it now believes those computer systems were first compromised in July 2005. TJX also...
Supermarket Checkout Keypads Compromised
Feb 20, 2007 by Tom Fragala
In a bold scam similar to what happens to ATM cash machines (see this video), data thieves setup skimming devices on the keypads in the checkout lanes at some Shop & Stop supermarket stores in New England. That really takes...
My Former Bank's Response To ID Theft Questions
Feb 17, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
One of my biggest concerns of identity theft is a drained bank or investment account. Years ago when I researched identity theft, I had a lot of questions for my bank. I asked what my liability would be if someone...
Banks Fight Back Against TJX in Data Breach
Feb 16, 2007 by Tom Fragala
The Canadian Privacy Law Blog (great blog, not just about Canada) pointed me to this eye opening story in a CIO Magazine blog. It is important because a bank seems to have tied the TJ Maxx security breach directly back...
Data on 200,000 Wellpoint Customers Stolen
Feb 14, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Courier-Journal reports: Computer tapes containing personal information on about 196,000 members of health insurer WellPoint — including many Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield customers in Kentucky and Indiana — have been stolen from the office of a WellPoint vendor....
VA Reveals Latest Breach is 535,000 Identities
Feb 12, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Originally, it was thought the VA external hard drive lost in Alambama recently had data on "only" 48,000 people or so. Today the VA issued a press release saying it was really data on 535,000 people. And that's not all....
The Real Impact of a Data Breach
Feb 9, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Data breaches make great copy for the media. Journalists write stories to create scapegoats and sell ads, while consultants (or even non-profits) love the stories because they sell data breach "remediation" services. And politicians eat it up because they can...
VA loses another hard drive
Feb 6, 2007 by Tom Fragala
I have written a lot about the VA in the past (see here). Everyone knows they had a laptop (and, don't forget, external hard drive) stolen last year with data on 26.5 million vets and active military. Well, they are...
TJX and its Customers Suffer Enormous Data Breach
Jan 20, 2007 by Tom Fragala
This could be the big kahuna, the largest most serious data breach of all time. TJX is the parent company of Marshalls and T.J. Maxx. This security breach happened eight months ago. The full extent of it is unknown or...
Moneygram Data Breach Disaster
Jan 16, 2007 by Tom Fragala
What a security horrow show. Bank account numbers, SSN’s and driver’s licenses for 79,000 people were breached. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Reuters reports: MoneyGram International Inc. the second-largest U.S. money transfer company, on Friday said someone illegally...
Data breach at University of Idaho
Jan 14, 2007 by Tom Fragala
70,000 people are at risk after a data theft at the University of Idaho. The breach was announced nearly two months after it happened. Spokesman Review reports The names, addresses and Social Security numbers of about 70,000 students, faculty members...
Who's Watching the Watchers? Federal Official Steals Identities.
Jan 14, 2007 by Tom Fragala
WOODTV.com reports A former federal official (in Grand Rapids, MI) is charged with using her access to password-protected accounts to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and various identities....
Two New Data Breach Bills in 2007
Jan 13, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Consumer Affairs has a good article about the first two updated data security bills bubbling up from the new Democrat-controlled Congress. They are the Social Security Number Misuse Prevention Act and the Notification of Risk to Personal Data Act. I have...
Is Mass. Finally Going to Get Serious About Identity Theft?
Jan 12, 2007 by Tom Fragala
According to Eric Bourassa of MassPIRG in this Somerville Journal story, Massachusettes is the only state in New England that has neither a credit freeze law or data breach law. 26 states have laws allowing individuals to freeze access to credit...
Laptops Stolen from Towers Perrin Contain Retirement Data
Jan 8, 2007 by Tom Fragala
A message from Truston. Do you want relief from the concerns about identity theft because of the laptop theft? But are you also worried when services like credit monitoring or so-called "fraud alerts" require your confidential personal information? Well, try...
Wisconsin Prints Social Security Numbers on Tax Booklets
Jan 6, 2007 by Tom Fragala
The Wisconsin Department of Revenue really screwed up. They transferred taxpayer SSN’s to a printer (idiotic, illegal move #1) and the printer dutifully put the SSN’s on 170,000 tax booklets (idiotic, illegal move #2). And no one along the way stopped to...
Huge law firm's records handed over to government
Dec 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
What do you think happens when a huge law firm goes belly up? Would you guess that all its records would be handed over to the government, lock, stock and barrel? It’s happening. Brobeck was a 900 lawyer firm, one of the...
100 Million Data Breach Victims Since 2005
Dec 16, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Infoworld has an article on this. Note that the victim numbers aren’t precise and the Privacy Rights Clearninghouse doesn’t claim that they are meant to be. They are really all about tracking the scope of reported victims. That disclosure pushed the total...
Boeing Laptop Stolen with 328,000 People's Data
Dec 16, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Boeing suffers yet another data breach via laptop theft. Files on the laptop contained employees' names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and birth dates, with some listing salary information. This time an employee left the laptop unattended (they...
UCLA data breach effects 800,000
Dec 12, 2006 by Tom Fragala
UCLA is notifying victims after suffering the largest known data breach ever at a university. This effects around 800,000 current students, former students, applicants, faculty and staff. The database was “fraudulently accessed” starting way back in October 2005! From the...
Victims to Receive Choicepoint Settlement
Dec 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Victims who believe they may have suffered losses as a result of identity theft caused by the data breach at ChoicePoint Inc. finally have a chance to recover some monetary pay back. Background from FTC.gov: In 2005, ChoicePoint, a company...
Truston Discovers a FDIC Data Security Flaw
Sep 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Updated below... Shame on the FDIC. I was tooling around their web site when I stumbled across a page that helps you determine the amount of your FDIC insurance (it may be more than the typical $100,000). I was stunned...
Why Shopping for the Lowest Price Can Lead to Ruin
Sep 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Brian Krebs put together a super article on his Security Fix WaPo blog. It goes deeper and in more nuanced directions than most fluff identity theft pieces. These are a few points that jumped out at me. 1. Having your...
NY Gets 3 New Identity Theft and Computer Crime Laws
Sep 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
New York Gov. Pataki signed three measures into law today. These bills establish the Consumer Communication Records Privacy Act, place limits on the use and disclosure of Social Security account numbers, and further clarify and define what is considered a...
Laptops are main source of data breaches
Sep 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Research into the source of data breaches has found that "…lost or stolen laptops were the main source of data breaches, rather than good old-fashioned hacking." Another data point that’s perhaps surprising: Datafrom New York state suggests that financial institutions have...
50,000 GE Employees at Risk of Identity Theft
Sep 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Apparently the laptop of a General Electric employee was stolen from a hotel room. The laptop has names and SSN on thousands of employees. WTEN-Albany has the (brief) story. ...
New York Times Article on Data Breaches
Sep 25, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Tom Zeller, Jr., writes in the NY Times today Less than two years into the great cultural awakening to the vulnerability of personal data, companies and institutions of every shape and size — like the data broker ChoicePoint, the credit card...
1,137 laptops missing from Commerce Department since 2001
Sep 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Have you heard? The Department of Commerce says that 1,137 of their laptops have been lost or stolen since 2001, with 249 of them containing some degree of personal data. 672 of them belonged to the U.S. Census Bureau (part...
Choicepoint Victims Still Waiting for FTC to Act
Sep 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Nearly eight months after regulators trumpeted a settlement with ChoicePoint Inc. over a data breach, the government has not paid any money to victims from a $5 million fund that was to be set up as part of the agreement....
How to make an ATM machine do your bidding
Sep 21, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A Wired blog called 27B Stroke 6 points to this. A security expert got his hands on the user’s manual for an ATM machine and was able to punch in some codes, turn on “operator” mode, entered some default passwords...
Life is Good Data Breach
Sep 19, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Life sucks right now for Life is Good. Stolen credit cards can do that to you. Boston Globe has more....
Nikon Posts Customers Names and Credit Cards on Web
Sep 14, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Nikon puts customer credit cards on web site. I “shutter” to think of the consquences (sorry, couldn’t resist). AP Wire reported this story. Personal information on more than 3,200 subscribers of a magazine published by Nikon Inc. was available on...
Laptop stolen from American Family Insurance
Sep 13, 2006 by Tom Fragala
There was a break-in that resulted in stolen computers including a laptop. Apparently effects over 2,000 customers. Social security numbers and driver’s license numbers were involved. Read more at wfrv.com. American Family Insurance is warning customers to be wary of...
Company Closing Down Throws Employee REcords in Trash
Sep 11, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Here we have a case of reverse dumpster diving. The employees, smartly, jumped in the dumpter to pull out their sensitive HR files which had their SSNs. This is a perfect example of what I tell people every chance I...
40% of Health Care Insurers and Agencies Lost Data since 2004
Sep 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Not sure I am surprised, but we should know how vulnerable we are—because so much of our sensitive data is spread around. ConsumerAffairs has got this story. A report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that privacy breaches...
Stolen Computer at Univ. of Minnesota Puts Thousands of Students at Risk
Sep 9, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. A pair of computers containing the personal information — in some cases Social Security numbers — of thousands of University of Minnesota students was stolen from a campus office. Now officials are...
Virtual World Second Life Suffers Data Breach via Hackers
Sep 9, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Second Life is an online 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents via the Internet. Linden Labs issued this Second Life Security Bulletin: Linden Lab reported today that it is notifying its community of a database breach, which...
BMO Bank of Montreal laptop stolen from branch
Sep 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This laptop was stolen from from the branch itself. Let me guess, it wasn’t locked down. So a $20 lock would have prevented this. Someone in security or IT should be fired. ottawasun.com has more: Hundreds of banking customers have been told...
FL National Guard laptop stolen
Sep 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A Florida National Guard laptop was stolen from a car. Florida Today reports: The Florida National Guard was conducting a security review Thursday after a laptop computer assigned to one of its soldiers was stolen in a car burglary.No classified...
Xanga.com Fined $1 Million for Disclosing Children's Data
Sep 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The FTC accounced this today: Social networking Web site operators Xanga.com, Inc. and its principals, Marc Ginsburg and John Hiler, will pay a $1 million civil penalty for allegedly violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and its implementing...
Chase throws tapes in trash with Circuit City customer data
Sep 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Associated Press via MSN: Chase Card Services says it's notifying more than two and a-half (m) million Circuit City credit card holders that computer tapes containing their personal information were mistakenly thrown in the trash.The company says it thinks the...
Security breach at TSA exposes employee data
Sep 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Transportation Security Administration suffers a data breach. No point in noting the irony. USAToday has the story. The Transportation Security Administration is warning 1,195 of its former employees that a contractor may have mailed their Social Security numbers and birth dates to...
AARP Studies Security Breaches and Identity Theft
Sep 5, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The AARP released a staudy called Into the Breach: Security Breaches and Identity Theft. I don’t have time to analyze it in depth right now. However, I did note that 29% of breaches (1/1/05 – 5/26/06) were the result of...
Call Center Staff in India Steal Confidential US and British Citizen's Data
Sep 2, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Observer reports on a scandal that looks like it might really explode. Leading British and American companies face being dragged into an emerging fraud scandal at a call centre company in India.V-Angels, a Delhi-based outsourcing company that handles customer...
Laptop Stolen with Personal Data Of Chicago Employees
Sep 1, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A laptop was stolen from a City of Chicago contractor with sensitive personnel information. There is a simple way, using the Internet, to lock down the data on and track these laptops after they are stolen. This needs to be...
Government awards blanket purchase agreements to two credit bureaus
Sep 1, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Your tax dollars are primed and ready. The credit reporting agencies now are drooling, waiting for the next huge data breach anywhere within the government. When it happens—ka-ching. FCW has more. Three firms received blanket purchase agreements Aug. 14 to...
Wells Fargo Employee Data Stolen
Aug 31, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A Wells Fargo contractor had a disk stolen from their car, containing sensitive personal data on employees, including social security numbers and prescription drugs. No news on the number of people effected. numbrX Security Beat blog has this story—and a photo...
Laptop with Social Security numbers stolen from Belhaven College
Aug 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
SunHerald reports that a college employee was mugged and the thief took his notebook computer. A laptop computer that contained the Social Security numbers of roughly 300 Belhaven College employees was stolen during a robbery on campus, officials say.Belhaven College...
AT&T customer data hacked and company steps up
Aug 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Hackers broke into an AT&T online store web site and accessed personal data including credit card information from “few than 19,000 customers”. AT&T said it alerted the major credit card companies and would provide credit monitoring. AT&T has been getting a...
Data Breaches are Unavoidable says New Survey
Aug 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A new survey of technology professionals reports that 63 percent of respondents don't believe they can prevent such breaches. The survey can be found here. More from PC World: "This group came out much, much more negative than I ever expected," said...
Employment verifications and your social security number
Aug 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Have you ever seen an employment verification from Choicepoint? This is something that a prospective employer might use to confirm that your employment background is as you told them. I have one in my hands right now. It has the...
Sovereign Bank has 3 laptops stolen--customer data lost
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
AP via Boston Globe has this one. Sovereign Bank is warning thousands of customers that their personal data may have been stolen along with three managers' laptops taken earlier this month in Massachusetts."There's no information any of the accounts have...
University of South Carolina data breach effects 6,000 students
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
USC reports that they just discovered a hacker data breach—that happened in September 2005. One year later?! This off the AP Wire via TheState.com: The University of South Carolina is warning 6,000 current and former students that some of their personal...
Data breach via laptop theft: breaches in August
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Here is a sampling of some recent data breach incidents caused by laptop theft or loss. The dates shown are the announcement date of the breaches usually. These are just the incidents that we know of thus far in August 2006. August...
Data breach of personal data by US Dept. of Education
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Homeland Stupidity has the story of a U.S. Department of Education web site that leaked the data of 21,000 students. As many as 21,000 students who applied for federal student financial aid may have had their personal data compromised after...
Laptops stolen, police say data is safe. Huh?
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
TimesDispatch.com has this small story. A spokesman for Dominion Resources has confirmed that two laptop computers containing employee information have been stolen. Company security and local law enforcement are investigating the theft, which apparently occurred earlier this month. Law officers...
PortTix credit card data hacked
Aug 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Portland Press Herald says “Credit card information for about 2,000 people who ordered tickets online through PortTix, Merrill Auditorium's ticketing agency, was stolen this week when someone hacked into the PortTix Web site.”...
Did HSBC leave 3.1 million bank customers exposed for two years?
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
CNET News.com has more. Banking giant HSBC has been accused of leaving its online accounts exposed for more than two years due to a security flaw, according to reports. According to a story in The Guardian on Thursday, the bank...
81% of U.S. firms lost laptops with sensitive data
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This via Computerworld: Loss of confidential data -- including intellectual property, business documents, customer data and employee records -- is a pervasive problem among U.S. companies, according to a survey released yesterday by Ponemon Institute LLC and Vontu Inc., a...
Hospital giant HCA has ten computers stolen
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld reports on this. HCA Inc., a Nashville-based firm that owns and operates approximately 182 hospitals and 94 surgery centers in 22 states, England and Switzerland, said 10 computers were stolen during a break-in at an undisclosed HCA regional office....
Florida DOT update: stolen laptops, insecure data
Aug 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
More on the Florida DOT laptop theft I reported a couple weeks ago. Through a blog posts by Brian at About.com, it appears that the laptop data was not encrypted after they originally said it was, and, two laptops have been stolen...
US Department of Transportation data breach
Aug 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A laptop with sensitive data on 133,000 Florida residents was stolen. More from MiamiHerald.com. A laptop computer containing personal information of more than 133,000 Floridians was stolen in late July from a government SUV parked in front of a popular...
Data breaches are not a threat
Aug 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
That is what Albert Gidari wants you to believe. He is a partner in the privacy and security group at big law firm Perkins Coie. Here’s his quote from a recent article in the National Law Journal. …Albert Gidari, a...
Another Veterans Affairs data breach: 38,000 effected
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update: Official VA press release on the incident. Another computer lost, another 38,000 identities in the wild. This after a lost laptop and hard drive potentially exposed 26.5 million. WSJ.com has the story. As many as 38,000 veterans may be at risk...
Bank computers taken in broad daylight
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
More stolen laptops. The data, however, is said to be encrypted. Denver Business Journal has the story. Matrix Bancorp Inc. disclosed late Friday that it was investigating the theft of two personal computers from the bank's downtown branch on Friday, July...
AOL data breach of user search data
Aug 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update: AOL apologizes (via CNet). You won’t believe this blunder. AOL purposely released data on 20 million web searches done by 650,000 users over a 3 month period. That’s right they meant to do it. They did replace user names...
Ohio University fires two IT execs because of data breach
Aug 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Ohio University recently suffered multiple data breaches. Now, after the CIO resigned, two IT managers are being fired. And, of course, they are saying none of it is their fault. ComputerWorld has the story. Our earlier reports here....
Two kids arrested for stealing VA laptop
Aug 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A couple of teenagers were arrested as the thieves that turned the country upside down. Apparently, they didn’t realize they had stolen a laptop with sensitive data on 26.5 million people. The Veterans Administration is breathing another sigh of relief....
Massive data breach of customer ATM info at Dollar Tree
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update: 10 days after I first reported it, Bob SUllivan of MSNBC is reporting this ATM-Debit data breach and fraud on his blog Red Tape. Bob does understand how seroius this fraud is. Finally, someone in the mainstream media gets...
Toyota laptop stolen, sensitive data on 1500 applicants
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The numbers are uncertain. It’s either 100,000 or 1500 people at risk. WOAI has the story: A security breach at the Toyota plant in San Antonio was being investigated Thursday after a laptop computer containing personal information for more than a thousand...
Hospital loses laptop; 257,000 patients at risk
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A disaster planning exercise went awry and a laptop was stolen. Now a quarter million people are at risk of identity theft. GuardMyCreditFile reports this story. A disaster planning exercise turned into a real disaster for one New York Hospital....
Paychex direct deposit paystub is identity theft risk
Aug 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Do you get paid via direct deposit through Paychex? If so, take a look at your paystub/statement. I looked at one recently and noticed that it shows the full checking account number! That puts the account holder at significant risk....
Data on 600,000 Time Warner Employees is Lost
Jul 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile has the story. Media giant Time Warner (TW) has had to announce that data tapes storing names, addresses and Social Security Numbers have been lost in transit. The tape contained data on current and former Time Warner employees, their...
Hampton VA data breach cover-up?
Jul 27, 2006 by Tom Fragala
I first reported on a data breach in Hampton, VA here. Now police and local officials are saying they believe that the only people who actually saw any sensitive data were the people who reported it. It takes real nerve...
ID Theft Bill HR 3997 Put On Hold in House
Jul 27, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile reports: HR 3997, the controversial bill that would stop the states from regulating data breaches, has been placed on hole in the House of Representatives. The bill, written primarily by the financial services industry, was scheduled to be voted...
Bill weakening consumer protection may reach vote (HR 3997)
Jul 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
It’s tiring trying to keep up with the moving targets that are the new data breach and ID theft bills moving through Congress. But Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and Ed Mierzwinski at U.S. PIRG warn consumers that...
540,000 NY workers at risk after data breach
Jul 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Another lost computer, another massive data breach. wnbc.com has this story which effects over half a million New York residents that have received workers compensation benefits. The names, addresses and Social Security numbers of as many as 540,000 injured workers...
House committee passes cyber-security bill
Jul 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Army Times reports: The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee passed a cyber-security bill called the Veterans Identity and Credit Security Act of 2006 (H.R. 5835). The bill establishes federal standards for notifying people when records containing names, Social Security number, birth...
Lost Tape Exposes 188,000 With Student Loans
Jul 19, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Nelnet, a student loan company, announced that it has lost a backup tape with data on 188,000 customers. GuardMyCreditFile has this one. Nelnet, based in Lincoln, NE, is one of the country’s largest student loan companies. The company currently services...
Veterans Affairs Final Offer to Veterans And Military
Jul 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Here’s the official word from the VA update page: Will VA offer free credit monitoring? Given the FBI's high degree of confidence that the information recently recovered was not accessed or compromised, VA believes that individual credit monitoring will no...
VA-specific data breach legislation coming?
Jul 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GovExec.com says that “the House Veterans Affairs Committee plans to debate legislation Thursday in hopes of preventing a similar security problem.”...
IT pros: your job is on the line
Jul 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Larry Greenemeier writes in an InformationWeek article that “The Next Data Breach Could Mean Your IT Job.” He’s right of course. IT pros will say it’s always been that way. Except with so many states now having security breach notification laws and...
VA reneges on free credit monitoring promise
Jul 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
On June 21 the Veterans Administration promised to provide everyone effected by the data breach with free credit monitoring. Now it appears they are abandoning that offer because the FBI believes the data was not compromised. See the AP story on FOXnews.com....
CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey
Jul 14, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Bill Brenner over at SearchSecurity.com points to the 11th annual report by the Computer Security Institute (CSI) and the San Francisco Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Computer Intrusion Squad. The report shows that average losses to security breaches were lower...
U of Tennessee data breach effects 36,000
Jul 14, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Eyewitness News Memphis reports The information for about 36,000 people were on the database. It included names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Those on the database were employed by UT on or before August 2005. By the way, an editor...
Data breach in Hampton, Virginia
Jul 13, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Just remember you read it here first July 11th. Sensitive data was revealed on a computer at Hampton Circuit Court (and so close to the VA data breach). This wasn’t a data theft, this was a computer that sat there allowing...
Ohio U. CIO steps down after data thefts
Jul 13, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Columbus Dispatch has this news (hat tip to Brian Koerner) which we reported on here. Ohio University suffered five data breaches this year alone. Ohio University, criticized by a consultant for failing to ensure steady leadership over computer systems...
Ohio U. CIO steps down after data thefts
Jul 13, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Columbus Dispatch has this news (hat tip to Brian Koerner) which we reported on here. Ohio University suffered five data breaches this year alone. Ohio University, criticized by a consultant for failing to ensure steady leadership over computer systems...
Data breach and ID theft laws update
Jul 11, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Beth Given at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse sent out an alert today in their newsletter on the controversal set of data breach and identity theft bills in Congress (I’ve written about this several times including here). The primary pieces of proposed legislation...
VA showed 'indifference' after data breach
Jul 11, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GovExec.com has an article based on a just released report by the VA Inspector General. The Veterans Affairs IG found that the analyst whose laptop was stolen had the OK to access the data, but apparently not to take the...
Financial services industry on data security
Jul 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The AFSA, which respresent a big swath of the financial services industry, has weighed in with their thoughts on the data breach bills working their way through the U.S. House. Their goals with any legislation are, not surprisingly, vastly different...
Hampton Virginia is butt naked
Jul 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
(Scroll for updates…) I don’t mean disrobed. I mean that the residents of Hampton, VA are all naked and wide open to identity thieves and secret data brokers. Why? Apparently, your sensitive data is being made available to anyone by...
Is it legal for your sensitive data to be online?
Jul 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The answer is YES. This article in FindLaw tells a gruesome tale of how state and local government is legally allowed to and has been posting your sensitive personal information online. This data could lead to identity theft and is...
Explaining our free service and other FAQs
Jul 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Recently, we announced free credit monitoring as part of our myTruston service. We did so because after the massive data breach at the VA, the government looked set to spend billions of dollars to provide credit monitoring and other credit services....
Big Navy data breach: 100,000 at risk
Jul 8, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This has got to be infuriating for them—the risk of ID theft is very real here. Washington Post is reporting that a Navy web site had posted the full names and social security numbers of 100,000 Navy and Marine aviators...
VA issues directive on security enforcement
Jul 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
SANS NewsBites has this about the Veterans Administration and adds some opinion. This is happening after the huge data breach. A directive from Veterans Affairs (VA) secretary James Nicholson gives the VA CIO the authority to enforce security policies and...
ADP hands over sensitive investor data in a scam
Jul 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
ABC News reports that ADP suffered a breach of hundreds of thousands of investors personal data. Automatic Data Processing, one of the world's largest payroll service companies, confirmed to ABC News that it was swindled by a data thief looking for...
North Carolina seeks to include gov't in data breach law
Jul 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
It took a data breach of historic proportion (26 million people by the VA) to make folks realize it isn’t just business that needs to be included. Story in the Charlotte Observer. Governments should have been included in the original...
Alumni file suit against Ohio U. after data breaches
Jul 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
SANS Institute points to a couple of stories on this breach we reported recently. Ohio University acknowledged that two alumni filed a lawsuit against the school alleging privacy violations and asking for compensation for any financial losses incurred through identity...
New data security bill introduced
Jul 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld has the story. One of the key issues around any attempt at a federal data security/breach law is whether it preempts and waters down any existing state laws. A bill introduced yesterday by Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and Sen....
Best Buy discuss security measures
Jul 3, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The MercuryNews has an article about Best Buy’s proactive moves to improve security. Best Buy describes a sweeping computer security project that touches nearly every aspect of data-handling by hundreds of computer systems. And it described 50 ``control points`` where...
Red Cross laptops stolen, data encrypted
Jul 1, 2006 by Tom Fragala
From Dallas Morning News: Three laptops, one of them containing personal information on thousands of blood donors – including Social Security numbers and medical histories – were stolen from a locked closet in the Farmers Branch office of the American...
Five Arrested in 2005 Lexis Nexis Data Breach
Jun 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile has this story. Federal authorities announced today that they have arrested five people in connection with the data breach at Lexis Nexis, a data wharehousing company, last year. The breach which exposed more than 300,000 people was the largest...
VA's chief information security officer resigns
Jun 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GovExec.com tells us that the CISO for the VA says he wasn’t able to do his job and implement security. The chief information security officer for the Veterans Affairs Department, who resigned Thursday and was subsequently placed on paid administrative...
VA suffers another data breach
Jun 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is reporting that this time a computer tape was lost at an Indiana Veterans Affairs office—back in May. And it was revealed that back in 2005 the VA suffered a loss of veterans information, as well....
VA worker had approval for data
Jun 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
In a case that keeps growing, the Veterans Affairs worker whose laptop was stolen had written, documented approval to have the sensitive data on 26.5 million veterans. (Hope Yen at AP via WaPo)...
$160m for vets to come from food stamps, farmers, students
Jun 30, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Office of Management and Budget has requested $160.5 million for free credit monitoring for veterans. One of the first things I wondered was “where does the money come from?” Well, now I know. The Office of Management and Budget...
Stolen VA Laptop Found
Jun 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Associated Press is reporting (via Forbes.com) The government has recovered the stolen laptop computer and hard drive containing sensitive data for up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday.Nicholson said law enforcement officials...
Data breach at San Francisco State Univ.
Jun 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
SF Chronicle has a story. San Francisco State University officials have put students and staff on alert because a thief broke into a faculty member's car earlier this month and stole a laptop with nearly 3,000 Social Security numbers and...
Data breach at USDA effects 26,000 federal employees
Jun 27, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Jim at GuardMyCreditFile has this report. …the USDA was forced to announce last week that as many as 26,000 employees and contractors may have had their data accessed and stolen by hackers. The announcement is just another in a string...
VA Asking for More Money After Data Theft
Jun 27, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Hope Yen of the AP continues her tireless reporting of this issue. The Department of Veterans Affairs is asking the President for emergency funds to cover the costs for dealing with this data breach, including credit monitoring. The VA asked...
Navy Data Beach is Related to Katrina Aid
Jun 27, 2006 by Tom Fragala
I blogged about the “new” Navy-specific data breach here. It is getting lost in all the noise about the VA situation. But here’s some updated news. Navy News has the story. Personal information on more than 30,000 Navy Sailors and...
Truston Offers Free Credit Monitoring to Save Gov't Billions
Jun 27, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A press release is going to hit the wire services shortly. We are announcing our free credit monitoring service and premium ID theft recovery services. They’ll be available in the 3rd quarter 2006. We’ve been working on this for well...
Vet's free credit monitoring delayed--price tag to rise to $26 billion?
Jun 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Update 6/26 6:20pm PT: In respone to criticism from veterans groups, the VA just announced that “An individual who chooses to sign up for the credit monitoring service, including the insurance, will not be asked or required to relinquish any...
AIG breach disclosed 3 months after theft
Jun 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
InformationWeek has an article about how the data breach notification laws often result in extended times for disclosure. The AIG breach was made public over three months after the theft of the equipment. Companies can use considerable discretion in how fast,...
Let's not forget the huge AIG data breach
Jun 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Lost in the fuss over the VA and Navy data breaches was the disclosure last week that AIG had a computer server stolen that contained sensitive data on 970,000 customers. It’s stunning that a breach of 1 million identities is small...
Data on 28,000 sailors and their families posted on web
Jun 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
AP Story in the Buffalo News. This data included SSN’s so it is serious stuff. The Navy News Service also has an article. The Navy has begun a criminal investigation after Social Security numbers and other personal data for 28,000...
Instructions for veterans & military if ID theft/data breach
Jun 23, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Updated 6/27/06 Are you a veteran or member of the U.S. military, including the reserve and National Guard? Wondering what to do after the computer theft/data breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs (aka VA or Veterans Administration)? Or are...
Veterans & military getting taken advantage of?
Jun 23, 2006 by Tom Fragala
By now we’ve all heard about the data breach at the VA. And the VA announced on Wednesday they would provide free credit monitoring (and possibly credit reports) for at least a year for anyone effected. So, can someone explain...
Personal Data on 970,000 Lost in AIG Theft
Jun 23, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Dow Jones reports via CNN.com After losing personal information for 930,000 people in the theft of a computer server, American International Group Inc. (AIG) Thursday said it plans to offer identity-restoration services to any who are "fearful" that their identity...
USA Today's coverage of the VA data breach
Jun 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
I was tooling around the USA today web site, and I thought I’d compile some of the stories they’ve posted on the VA data theft story. Since they are the largest US newspaper (2.5 million subs). Stories can be found...
FTC and other government agencies leaking data like a sieve
Jun 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Hope Yen of the AP has this story in the Seattle PI. The government agency charged with fighting identity theft said Thursday it had lost two government laptops containing sensitive personal data, the latest in a series of breaches encompassing...
Did one word doom the VA to weak security?
Jun 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Martin McKeay's Computerworld Blog says so. According to GovExec.com, the reason the Veterans Administration didn't have a centralized IT security authority was because the VA's general council argued that the CIO's responsibility was to 'ensure' FISMA compliance not 'enforce'. Martin...
Credit monitoring for veterans not enough?
Jun 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Grant Gross of ComputerWorld has this story. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA's) offer of free credit monitoring to the 26.5 million military veterans affected by a recent data theft is not enough to fix the problem, the chairman...
House panel plans hearings on VA records theft
Jun 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Army Times reports Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., a member of Buyer’s committee, introduced a bill Tuesday that would require the VA to provide free credit monitoring and credit reporting for any veterans whose personal information was on the stolen computer....
VA announces free credit monitoring
Jun 21, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Veterans Administration announced today that the agency will provide one year of free credit monitoring to individuals whose Social Security Number may have been stolen in the data breach incident. However, they have not selected a vendor yet and...
Laptop With Equifax Employee Data Stolen
Jun 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
AP has this report. A credit bureau suffers a data breach of its own employees data. Equifax Inc., one of the nation's three major credit bureaus, said Tuesday a company laptop containing employee names and Social Security numbers was stolen from...
Verizon Laptop Theft May Expose Employees
Jun 17, 2006 by Tom Fragala
WSJ.com has this news brief. Verizon Communications Inc. has notified employees that the theft of two company laptop computers may leave them vulnerable to identity fraud.In a letter dated March 1, Verizon alerted workers that computers stolen from a company...
Another Security Breach at Ohio University?
Jun 11, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Brian Koerner has another interesting story brewing at About.com. Reportedly Ohio University has suffered yet another security breach, making it its fourth breach reported in less than two months. As of June 9, 2006 Ohio University posted on their website that...
U of Michigan Credit Union Data Breach Leads Identity Theft
Jun 11, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Brian Koerner from About.com has this important follow up story. In the case of the University of Michigan Credit Union, where the breach occurred last summer, such compromise of personal information has been confirmed to have led to cases of...
YMCA laptop with 65,000 members' information stolen
Jun 9, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Providence Journal tells us how yet another laptop is involved in a data breach. The statement by the YMCA referenced in the article almost seems to downplay the significance of checking account and routing numbers by saying that only...
Nuclear security worker data breach
Jun 9, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Good lord. CNET News.com has this story. Add the U.S. Department of Energy to the list of federal agencies beset by theft of their employees' personal data in recent months.Officials appearing before Congress on Friday went public for the first...
VA Data Breach Effects Active Duty Personnel
Jun 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The WaPo has a new story on the VA data breach reported on this blog here and here. This breach included sensitive personal data on active duty personnel. That’s especially devastating I feel because if those folks are overseas and...
Royal Ahold Loses Personal Data of Former Employees
Jun 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The data security breaches continue at a breathtaking pace. This time Washington Post has a story about the huge grocer Royal Ahold (Stop & Shop, etc.): Grocery retailer Royal Ahold NV has lost personal information for an unknown number of...
Student loan data breach: 1.3 million Texas students' names, SSNs
Jun 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala
TNCNet via the Dallas Morning News reports on another data breach. (Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge). Don't breathe easy just because your student loans are long paid off: Names and Social Security numbers from accounts closed...
Cleaning Up Data Breach Costs 15x More Than Encryption
Jun 6, 2006 by Tom Fragala
TechWeb has this report… Protecting customer records is a magnitude less expensive than paying for cleanup after a data breach or massive records loss, a research company said Tuesday.Gartner analyst Avivah Litan said in a research note that data protection...
More on the VA data breach
Jun 2, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld has an article under the heading of “continued coverage: data security breaches. Tim O'Pry, his wife and his son are all veterans, and they're among the 26.5 million vets whose personal data was stolen this month from the home...
Laptop theft exposes 243,000 Hotels.com customers
Jun 2, 2006 by Tom Fragala
CNET has this story… A seemingly random theft has led to another potential breach of personal data--this time name, address and credit card data from Hotels.com customers. A laptop belonging to an Ernst & Young employee was stolen in a...
Sacred Heart University Suffers Data Breach
May 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
CNET News.com has a story that says 135,000 people may have had their personal information stolen. The school posted a notice on their web site. The Fairfield, Conn.-based university said in the posting that it discovered the intrusion on May 8...
Oklahoma, New York & Illinois Move to Strengthen ID Theft Laws
May 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile reports on movement in three states, Oklahoma, New York and Illinois, to increase consumer protection. Legislators in three states are attempting to strengthen consumer privacy laws and enhance consumer rights in order to prevent identity theft. The moves come...
Ugly Duckling Leaked Sensitive Customer Data For Financial Gain
May 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Robert Brennan of the SoCalCreditDamage.com Blog has a press release on his blog about a class action case he is representing. Consumers shopping at DRIVE TIME (formerly known as UGLY DUCKING) for used cars usually have filled out credit applications...
U.S. PIRG Rips Into the VA for Security Breach
May 23, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog gets “medieval” on the Veterans Administration for the horrifying data breach that was reported here May 22 (26 million veterans had their sensitive data exposed). Here’s some highlights. …VA goes on to pass the buck...
1 Million Red Cross Blood Donors Exposed to ID Theft
May 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile has this story… About 1 million people contained in a Red Cross blood donor database have been exposed to identity theft by a dishonest employee of the organization. The suspect in the case, Lonetta S. Medcalf worked as a...
Information for Victims of VA Data Breach
May 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Firstgov.gov has got a web page for more information about the huge security breach at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has recently learned that an employee, a data analyst, took home electronic data from...
Personal data of 26 million US veterans stolen
May 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Yahoo! News reports: Personal electronic data on 26.5 million US military veterans and some spouses was stolen from the home of a government employee, the USDepartment of Veterans Affairs announced.Veterans affairs officials said there was no evidence the information had...
FTC Testifies on Social Security Numbers in Commerce
May 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
A press release entitled Reconciling Beneficial Uses with Threats to Privacy from the FTC newsroom. The Federal Trade Commission today told the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that in the...
Payment card industry changes standards--for the better or worse?
May 18, 2006 by Tom Fragala
C|NET reports: Proposed new security rules for credit card-accepting businesses will put more scrutiny on software, but let them off the hook on encryption. The update to the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, due this summer, responds to...
DOD Fraud Conference Attendees At Risk of Identity Theft
May 14, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile reports that attendees at a 2001 Defense Department fraud conference may have been exposed to identity theft—not in 2001, but this year. In August of 2001, the DOD held a conference on healthcare fraud in San Diego, CA. More...
New bill puts law enforcement first in data breach
May 11, 2006 by Tom Fragala
CNET News.com is reporting on yet another bill introduced in the US house regarding data breaches and cybersecurity. A new proposal in Congress, called the Cybersecurity Enhancement and Consumer Data Protection Act, would force anyone who possesses electronic personal data to...
Data breach notification law unlikely this year
May 5, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This Computerworld article thinks that there won’t be any action on a US data breach law this year. Lawmakers have introduced more than 10 bills dealing with data breach notification since early 2005. The bills differ in several ways, including...
Ohio University reports two security breaches
May 5, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld reports that not only did 137,000 social security numbers get leaked, but the computer that was hacked, had been compromised for over a year. On April 24, IT officials at Ohio University noticed that someone had hacked into an...
Interview with IBM exec on breach notification laws
May 2, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld has this interview with Harriet P. Pearson, vice president of corporate affairs and chief privacy officer at IBM. It covers breach notification laws and the growing challenges of managing risk and security. If you needed any proof that the...
Aetna Data Breach Effects 38,000
Apr 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The blog Make Money Fast Hall of Humiliation points to a story in the Consumerist that reports insurance company Aetna has an employee’s laptop stolen....
Data Breach Disclosure State Laws
Apr 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
About.com had a valuable writeup on security breaches called Understanding Data Breach Disclosure. In it, Brian Koerner, has some super links with detailed and up to date state laws on data breaches, which are worthwhile linking to directly. Definitely check...
LexisNexis Says Data Breach Honesty is Best Policy
Apr 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
SANS NewsBites - Vol: 8, Issue: 34 talks about this interesting insight from a company responsible for a major data breach last year. Speaking at the Infosec Europe 2006 conference in London, LexisNexis senior director for information security Leo Cronin...
Fraudsters steal details on 2,000 credit cards
Apr 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
CNET News.com says “Fraudsters stole the credit card details of 2,000 MasterCard holders in a major security breach last week.” This appears to effect card holders in the U.K. only....
Univ. of Texas data breach exposes 197,000 people
Apr 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld has the story on a new data breach at the University of Texas. In another reminder of the vulnerability of university networks, the University of Texas at Austin over the weekend announced that someone had broken into a computer...
Arizona Drops the Ball With Weak Data Breach Bill
Apr 26, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardMyCreditFile reports Arizona’s state legislature has passed a data breach notification law that is currently awaiting the signature of Governor Janet Napolitano. While the law may have been well intentioned, it has some critical flaws and we are urging the...
University of So. Carolina exposes student SSNs
Apr 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
MSNBC.com reports University of South Carolina officials are advising students to watch their credit reports after the Social Security numbers of as many as 1,400 students were mistakenly e-mailed to classmates. A department chairwoman distributing information about summer classes accidentally...
Wired's Article on the So-called Anti-ID-Theft Bills
Apr 21, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Bruce Schneier has an article in Wired News about the new identity theft bills floating around Congress. Probably the biggest flaw with these potential federal laws are they are written to wipe out stronger state laws that already exist. I wrote about it previously...
Arizona House OKs bill to curb identity theft
Apr 19, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Arizona has probably the worse ID theft problem in the country. And many people I talk to attribute the problem, at least partly, to weak laws and lax enforcement. A January 2006 report by the FTC, entitled “Consumer Fraud and...
Beware the 'pod slurping' employee
Apr 17, 2006 by Tom Fragala
CNET News.com has the story: A U.S. security expert who devised an application that can fill an iPod with business-critical data in a matter of minutes is urging companies to address the very real threat of data theft. Abe Usher,...
No credit card data breach in N.H. server case
Apr 17, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld reports An FBI investigation has concluded that no consumer credit or debit card information was stolen from a New Hampshire state computer server in February because a suspect Cain & Abel password recovery program found on the hardware had...
Ross-Simons says security breach exposes customers
Apr 14, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld reports Ross-Simons, which sells specialty merchandise through retail stores and more than 60 million catalogs each year, late yesterday said a security breach could allow unauthorized access to its customers' confidential financial information.The company -- whose products include jewelry,...
Data breach at Progressive highlights insider threat
Apr 9, 2006 by Tom Fragala
This article from Computerworld digs into the security threat from insiders, using the example of a recent data breach. A recent case in which an employee at Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. wrongfully accessed information on foreclosure properties she was interested...
100,000 Florida State Workers at Risk in Data Leak
Apr 4, 2006 by Tom Fragala
ComputerWorld reports Personal information of state employees in Florida may have been compromised after work on the state's People First payroll and human resources system was improperly subcontracted to one or more firms in India.About 108,000 current and former employees...
94,000 Los Angeles County Residents Exposed to Identity Theft
Apr 2, 2006 by Tom Fragala
GuardmyCreditFile reports The Los Angeles County Office of the Department of Public Social Services announced today that it has sent letters to 94,000 county residents that they may have been exposed to identity theft. In January, documents containing their names,...
200,000 US Marines at Risk of ID Theft
Mar 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Stars and Stripes is reporting that over 200,000 Marines may be at risk for identity theft after loss of portable drive. A portable drive with personal information on more than 207,750 Marines was lost earlier this month, possibly jeopardizing those troops'...
House panel approves data protection bill
Mar 29, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld is reporting: A U.S. House of Representatives committee has unanimously approved a bill that would create regulations for so-called data brokers, including a requirement that U.S. companies that traffic in personal data notify victims of breaches. The House Energy...
Gratis allegedly sold 7 million consumer emails illegally
Mar 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Computerworld provides further proof that signing up for free offers via the web is a bad idea. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is suing Web site operator Gratis Internet Inc. for allegedly violating consumer confidentiality agreements by selling...
Data Breach at Fidelity Puts 196,000 at Risk
Mar 24, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The New York Times is reporting that a laptop computer owned by Fidelity Investments was stolen. It contained sensitive data on around 196,000 retirement account customers. The company, the nation's largest mutual fund manager, confirmed reports Thursday that the computer held information on...
Data breaches since Choicepoint: 53 million people
Mar 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse wrote a super article summarizing all the data breaches since the first occurance of Choicepoint’s fraud-tinged data breach which started with their announcement February 15 2005. The total number of people who have had their personal information compromised...
GuardMyCreditFile rips feds over looming privacy crisis
Mar 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
Jim from GuardMyCreditFile has written several posts lately about the bill winding its way through Congress. In this one he makes an argument that the California breach notification law (which would be wiped out by HR3997 as its now written), actually...
Data breach bill creates firestorm of controversy
Mar 20, 2006 by Tom Fragala
There’s been a lot of noise about HR 3997, also called the Financial Data Protection Act. I'm a few days behind on this. CALPIRG blog (ED MIERZWINSKI) writes about this bill here first and then about a later draft here the same day, calling it...
iBill Says Stolen Data Does Not Belong to Them
Mar 17, 2006 by Tom Fragala
I recently posted about a data breach that had to do with a company called iBill. Here’s an update from SANS NewsBites: iBill says that large quantities of stolen customer data linked to the on-line payment company are in fact...