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Posts Tagged ‘Data Breach’
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
A recent data breach at the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission could affect the security of people who hold occupational gaming licenses.
The commission reported that on Jan. 26, the state firewall functionality was circumvented due to network routing changes and a licensing database was breached. The release states that information potentially released would include the information contained on occupational license applications, including social security numbers and date of birth.
Monday, February 1st, 2010
The insurer becomes the first plan sued under a new law allowing attorneys general to enforce HIPAA privacy laws.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has filed a lawsuit against California-based Health Net, alleging the company violated federal laws protecting medical records when a portable data drive disappeared.
According to Blumenthal’s office, the Jan. 13 lawsuit is the first action by an attorney general acting under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, or HITECH Act (part of the 2009 federal stimulus package) to enforce privacy laws under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
The lawsuit says the drive contained 27.7 million pages of scanned documents containing information about 446,000 enrollees and their physicians. The data was not encrypted, the lawsuit said, as required by HIPAA and by Health Net’s own corporate policy.
Friday, January 29th, 2010
A hacker made a bipartisan attack on the websites of 49 members of the U.S. House of Representatives two nights ago, and posted a negative comment about President Obama, the Associated Press reported. Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the chief administrative office, told AP that while most lawmakers’ sites are managed internally, the sites that suffered the attacks are managed by a third-party vendor, GovTrends of Alexandria, Va. The crude defacements reportedly included messages such as: “F— OBAMA!! Red Eye CREW !!!!! O RESTO E HACKER!!! by HADES; m4V3RiCk; T4ph0d4 — FROM BRASIL” Ventura noted that GovTrends was in the midst of an update when the attack occurred, adding that 18 House sites managed by GovTrends were defaced last year.
Friday, January 29th, 2010
The cost of data breaches continues to rise, and malicious attacks accounted for more of them in 2009 than in previous years, according to a study published today.
In conjunction with study sponsor PGP Corp., Ponemon Institute today released the results of its fifth annual “U.S. Cost of a Data Breach” report. The news isn’t good, according to the research firm’s founder, Larry Ponemon.
The 2009 study showed a slight increase in the organizational cost of a data breach — from $6.65 million to $6.75 million per incident — and a slight increase in the average cost per compromised record, from $202 to $204.
Friday, January 29th, 2010
A data breach at the National Archives and Records Administration is more serious than previously believed. It involved sensitive personal information of 250,000 Clinton administration staff members, job applicants and White House visitors, as well as the Social Security number of at least one daughter of former Vice President Al Gore.