Category Archives: data breach

Notre Dame data breach; ID theft risk for 24,000 employees

December 11, 2009 – 1:04 pm

A data breach is never a good thing, but when the data breach isn’t discovered for three years, and then those responsible wait two months before notifying those affected and at risk of ID theft … Well, 24,000 University of Notre Dame employees are confronting that situation.
Files containing the employees’ names, Social Security numbers, birth [...]

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ID theft risk for BlueCross BlueShield members after data breach

December 4, 2009 – 3:38 pm

Members will be receiving mail from BlueCross BlueShield any day now, but it won’t be Christmas cards. Instead, they’ll be getting letters warning them that they are at a heightened risk from ID theft because their personal, financial and even medical information may be among the millions of records missing after 57 computer hard drives [...]

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Virginia DOE data breach affects more than 100,000

October 19, 2009 – 9:59 am

The Virginia state government has suffered another major data breach, their second this year. The most recent occurred September 21 when an unencrypted flash drive containing the names, Social Security numbers and employment and demographic information of 103,000 people was lost.
Those affected either took an adult education class between April 2007 and January 2009, or [...]

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BlueCross BlueShield data breach affects 850,000 doctors

October 8, 2009 – 12:29 pm

As many as 850,000 physicians may be affected by theft of a BlueCross BlueShield employee’s laptop. Physicians’ names addresses, federal tax ID numbers and national provider numbers were contained in an unencrypted file on the laptop.
The data breach presents the possibility of massive medical insurance fraud, but the 187,000 doctors who used their Social Security [...]

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LifeLock review: Insider data breaches increasing; 1.33 million records stolen by insiders in 2008

July 15, 2009 – 2:23 pm

Yes, there was a time when a hacker was a pimply-faced guy sitting in his parents’ basement surrounded by pizza boxes and bulky PCs. But that’s not who’s responsible for data breaches in this millennium.
Increasingly, it’s insiders who are stealing their organizations’ information, according to recent studies.

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LifeLock review: Virginia Dept. of Health Professions extortionist demands $10 million

May 5, 2009 – 1:57 pm

A wise-ass hacker has broken into the Virginia Department of Health Professionals, and is demanding $10 million in ransom for the return of the stolen information. According to Wikileaks.org, the hacker stole the data, encrypted it, and posted the following ransom not on the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program website:
“I have your shit. In *my* possession, [...]

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LifeLock review: Managers turn off laptop encryption, lose laptops–DOH!

April 30, 2009 – 12:04 pm

In the old westerns it was easy to tell the good guys from the bad; the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black. But, when it comes to identity theft and hackers, the bad guys are invisible, and the people we thought were the good guys either refuse to wear their [...]

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LifeLock review: 285,000,000 records compromised in 2008 data breaches

April 21, 2009 – 11:28 am

Verizon Business’ just-released an analysis of 1,152 data breaches that occurred in 2008, and found that 285,000,000 records were compromised as a result of security lapses. Kind of makes mail shredding seem like a quaint notion, doesn’t it?

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LifeLock review: 1,600 stolen identities sold to undercover agent

April 7, 2009 – 12:14 pm

Steven K. Gilmore was arrested last week after arranging to sell 1,600 sets of names, birth dates and Social Security numbers to an undercover agent. He had already sold 35 sets of similar information to the agent between October 2008 and March 2009.

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30,000 Kaiser Permanente employees’ personal info stolen

February 17, 2009 – 8:46 pm

No matter what resentments you hold against your employer, in an economy like this you have to bite your tongue and be thankful you have a job.

That’s got to be especially tough for the 30,000 Kaiser Permanente employees who just found out someone has stolen their personal information in the form of what looks like [...]

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