Archive for the ‘Data Breach News’ Category

Do Breach Notification Laws Work?

Friday, March 13th, 2009

by Doug Pollack This past week, a seminar was held on the campus of UC Berkeley on the topic of Security Breach Notification. Wired Magazine published an article about this topic and the unfortunately conclusion that while breach notification laws are substantially increasing the awareness of data breaches with the public ...

Old Scam Making Alarming Comeback on Facebook

Monday, February 16th, 2009

  By Rebecca Seaman Remember the classic “Nigerian 419” scam; where a rich Prince or Bank Executive from a foreign country just needed your banking information to facilitate a transfer of funds? In exchange for your help, you would receive a percentage of those funds; Gratis. And just like that, you could ...

Third Parties in Data Breaches

Friday, February 13th, 2009

by Doug Pollack The VA this week announced that they will pay up to $20 million to veterans whose personal information was exposed in 2006 when a laptop was lost by an employee of Unisys, a government contractor that was handling claims processing for them. USA Today reported that while the laptop ...

FTC Report on Social Security Numbers and their Relationship to Identity Theft

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

 by Doug Pollack The FTC released a report last month titled "Security in Numbers -- SSNs and Identity Theft" that delves into the linkage between how we are asked to use our social security number for identification and authentication, and the related implications on subsequent identity theft. It notes that identity ...

Peer to peer networks create enterprise data leakage risk

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

by Doug Pollack Today's article by Ben Worthen in the Wall Street Journal highlights an unexpected risk to an organizations data security. While many companies do not sanction the use of peer-to-peer network sharing software by employees, the article describes the potential risk of a data breach when employees use business ...

Stock Market Woes Result in Increased Cyber Attacks

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

by Doug Pollack During this period of economic uncertainty and financial decline, there concurrently appears to be an increase in cyber attacks using malware. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that: "Ever since the start of September, when the financial crisis hit in earnest, something odd has happened on the days the stock ...

New Data Privacy Laws

Friday, October 17th, 2008

by Doug Pollack This week Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal published an article titled "New Data Privacy Laws Set for Firms" describing new laws that will affect business of all shapes and sizes in terms of how they protect the personal information of their customers and clients. Law related to ...

Reduce the Impact of a Data Breach

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

by Doug Pollack "Thirty-one percent of customers—nearly one-third of a company's client base and revenue source—are terminating their relationship with organizations following a data breach, according to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute." Rick Kam, president of ID Experts provides guidance in a recently published article in CSO Magazine titled "How ...

Phishers Upgrade to Vishing: Phone Scams Target Your Identity

Monday, August 4th, 2008

By Rebecca Seaman By now, most savvy consumers are aware of Phishing Scams: emails supposedly sent from one of the entities we do business with asking us to verify our personal information by clicking on a link in the body of the email. We know that if our creditors or banking ...

Senate Passes Stricter Identity Theft Legislation

Friday, August 1st, 2008

  By Rebecca Seaman A modified bill that would allow victims of ID Theft to recoup costs in federal court and which would impose harsher restrictions on cyberattacks passed in the Senate this week. The bill, known as the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, still needs to be approved by the ...