Security news

Pvt. Bradley Manning managed to bypass security of the US army computers. During investigation of theft of more than 150,000 top secret files it was revealed that he carried data on a disk labeled as a Lady Gaga music CD.

Employees spend more and more time on social networks. Numbers of those who use social networks in their working time are also increasing. This is the result of research performed on 1,600 corporate users from the UK, the USA, Germany and Japan.

The results have shown that every fourth employee uses Facebook or other social networks. The highest increase of popularity of social networks has been observed in Germany and the UK.

AMR, the controlling company of American Airlines, was stolen a portable disk from its seat in Fort Worth, Dallas, USA. It contained digitalized records of 70,000 former and current employees of the corporation from 1960 to 1995.

Over 130,000 names, dates of birth, addresses, medical diagnoses and social insurance numbers were lost from Lincoln Hospital in New York.

The files you deleted from your disk can be easily restored into a readable form. Expensive equipment or special knowledge are often not necessary.

Cincinnati hospital has recently reported the loss if over 61,000 entries of children patients. 

The privacy of patients in American hospitals has recently been threatened by frequent leakages of confidential data and medical records.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has fined brokerage firm Davidson & Co. for data leakage in 2007 which resulted in exposure of personal data of nearly 200,000 clients of Davidson & Co.

Sellers associated with last year’s leakage of 130 million pieces of credit cards data do not want to be publicized.

Nonprofit company ECMC, a guarantor of federal student loans, failed in protection of its clients’ records.

GCHQ British spy centre was criticized by the British parliament for having a “cavalier” attitude to confidential data security.

An international advisory network KPMG issued the Data Loss Barometer research. Its message is clear: Be afraid of your own employees more than of hackers.

The Shands medical center reported a stolen laptop with medical record of patients of the Florida university. The laptop was stolen during a burglary at home of one of the employees.

Modern hotels, limousines, dinners in expensive restaurants. That was part of the last year for one of the employees of a marketing company in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

The case that happened on the 7 February proves how important it is to protect the sensitive data saved on computer disks.

The weakest link of security of internet services are the users themselves. 47% users use the same login for other services.

A schoolboy found a USB flash disk with confidential data about Slovak army on a bus stop on Thursday. The disk contained information about evacuation plans, signature cards or a complete schedule of military drills. All information were probably related to a single troop and the military police have confirmed the authenticity of the data on the disk.

Computer database of collective2.com had been breached by a hacker and all users receive email that they should log in to change their passwords immediately.

Following a computer breach earlier in December, Eastern Washington University will be notifying 130,000 current and former students that their identifying information may have been compromised. Hackers apparently installed software to store and share video files on the university system, which enables data breach.