IT News & Technology update

Top 3 Medical Organizations to lose data in 2008

IT security world continues to be plagued by incidents of data loss; laptops with confidential data are stolen or lost at airports, have disks, USB memory devices are hidden, and so forth. According technology blue chips, among all the things that cause data to be lost, human error accounts for 26% of everything. Let's see now the first three companies that manage to lose private, confidential data this year and the number of people affected by these incidents.

No sooner does not begin by 2008 Horizon Cross Blue Shield Blue found in one of its laptops were stolen. On 5 January, a laptop containing information about 300000 people covered by Horizon was stolen while in custody of employees who have not yet been identified. Thankfully, the data on the laptop was password protected and scheduled to automatically delete itself in 17 days' time (23 January).

In February, from one blood bank Memphis, called the lifeblood lost two laptops containing information on 321000 donors. The amount of information collected for each donor is truly amazing: name, address, birth date, social security numbers, phone number and email address, driving license, and of course blood type. One question arises: how much private information, should you give, to donate blood?

Number one spot goes to Scotland of the Office for Emergency Assistance Services, which in June lost data staggering 894629 calls to emergency services for a period exceeding one year. It seems that the data are stored data on portable disk, which was entrusted to the courier company TNT, so that they can be transported by TANTRA to Glasgow. At least the data is encrypted and password protected.

Note that the ranking is presented above in respect of organizations which specialize in medical services. Currently all the winner when it comes to loss of data is U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which managed to lose data for 28.6 million people in May 2006.

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Apple gives away account password

It’s recently to light that Apple developers landing just right to give the password for Marko Karppinen account. He is CEO of MK & C, and software development studio based in Helsinki, Finland, which designs and develops software for Mac. How could such a thing happen? Well, it seems that all the scammer had to do was to send poorly worded message to Apple.

A few days ago Marko Karppinen found much to his surprise that he was unable to log in to Apple developers link. Although their user name and password does not match and clearly has been altered, he was able to regain access to their profile by answering the security question, which is unchanged. Further examination, are found this message in his. Mac mailbox:

"I forget your password of Mac, did not you give me a new password for email Marko [redacted] @ yahoo.com"

It would seem that the attacker send e-mail to Apple, thus managing to obtain the necessary information to access the account. Hackers usually try to get this kind of information through phishing attack the consumer, or hack a service provider. Even with data for hermetic sealing will be more reasonable way to obtain private information. Why worry with such a resource consuming time and effort when all you have to do is ask, and Apple will provide a team? With just one sentence, which reads as bad attacker granted access to Marko's e-mail account, iTunes Store account, iDisk, iPhone developers program. Mac synchronizations, credit card information, and not least its ACD Premier membership, which is worth about $ 3000.

"Frankly, this makes me so angry that I can not see straight. Would you even begin to assess the value of work must do to ensure all the information that you are compromised? How do you propose to restore confidence that I, or indeed someone, sometime must keep confidential for everything that you systems again?" said Marko Karppinen of your blog.

In Apple developer’s arrival of European support team contacted Mark and told him that he would do everything possible to fix the problem as soon as possible. They expressed their deepest regret on this issue and said incidents like this should not happen.

Marko most recent publication says that Apple is not re-contact with him yet, although a considerable amount of time has passed. "The ratio continues to receive a password requests, but as people said these are safe unless one of Apple Overrides procedure manual"

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Google reported loses employee data to burglars

Google USA is lost their employee data, how come? Is Burglars get their hands on Google data?

Google is not to fault for this, since the data was stolen from the office Google, but from the headquarters of the High outsourcing company called Colt Express. In thieves out and stole unencrypted computer company, which contain data on them, data such as name, address, Social Security number, mainly for everything you'll need for an ID theft. Google and other companies engaged Colt Express are affected by the recent break c.

The authorities assume that thieves are interested in the computers' monetary value because they are simple burglars, no ID thieves. At this moment there is no evidence to support the claim that the purpose of robbery was to obtain data on the PC.

Information Danny Thorpe, a former engineer at Google, is one of those computers. He has just now been informed by letter about the incident. The letter was sent from Google and mentioned that all employees who joined the company as of December 31, 2005, may have had their private data stolen. It does not contain any information on the credit card.

Although Google is not directly responsible for the incident, she is willing offer assistance to all who participate in this area. This assistance takes the form of money, namely Google will pay for one year subscription service that specializes in the detection of ID theft. Colt Express must pay for this, but Samuel Colt III himself came, to say that they "did not have the resources, financial and otherwise to assist you further," as reported by ZDNet.

Google is no longer a customer of Colt Express: "We take the security of our employees and require very seriously external suppliers is necessary to meet the security standards. We review and update those standards on an ongoing basis. Google currently does not use the services of a Colt and had made that decision long before this incident.

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Data Breaches – An Old Problem, Experts Revealed

A survey conducted by Deloitte & Touche LLP and the Ponemon Institute LLC revealed that 85 percent of the security professionals in North America discovered a data breach, targeting personally identifiable information inside their company in the last year.

Moreover, 63 percent of the respondents confirmed they have recorded multiple data breaches in the same period. The online study included more than 800 privacy and security experts from North America. Let's see some other findings: security experts are not always looking to train employees on privacy and data breaches, as only 7 percent of them conduct such as actions.

"Frankly, I’m shocked by the high percentage of PII data breaches we’re seeing occur within organizations. This survey provides insight into the scale of the problem and how enterprises are struggling to respond. It’s clear that both privacy and security professionals are caught in a reactive cycle, and they agree on the need to move to a more proactive stance", said Rena Mears, Deloitte global and U.S. privacy and data protection leader.

Although the data breaches occur every once in a while and new technologies are developed by software companies from all over the world, most affected firms still rely on their security solutions. Only 55 percent of the companies implemented "some type of encryption", the study revealed.

"The astonishingly high rate of data breaches is undermining public trust in both commercial and governmental organizations and points to an urgent need for privacy and security to be elevated as a coordinated, strategic imperative within all organizations", said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. "Our research suggests that privacy and security are still largely reactive, siloed functions; this mindset needs to change immediately if we are to stem the swelling tide of data breaches plaguing consumers and enterprises."

If you want to view some other findings or read the entire study, check out this link

Source of articles: Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor, softpedia.com

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