The U.S. tops Germany, the U.K. and France when it comes to data breach notification costs. In other words, it costs American companies more to notify people of a data breach when their personal information is lost or stolen. The Ponemon Institute, which recently conducted a global data breach study, found that it cost U.S. [...]
Medical identity theft is no longer some obscure phrase spoken primarily in data security circles. It’s quickly becoming a household term for millions of Americans who’ve become a victim or know someone victimized by identity theft. In fact, 90% of the respondents in a recent study knew the definition of medical identity theft this year, [...]
Today, those who steal data from the outside also usually steal the headlines. Witness recent mega-hacks at some very well-known firms: Electronics corporation: criminals accessed, stole and reused usernames and passwords from nearly 100,000 accounts stored on third-party servers Social media site: encoded passwords for 6.5 million (one out of 25) users were filched and openly [...]
Swimmers may be stealing the spotlight, but it’s scammers who are taking home the gold–in the form of stolen credit card numbers, PINs, consumers’ personal identities. One familiar con trotted out this year (and every Olympics) is ticket fraud, including what Britons call ‘ticket touting’ (scalping) and its more sinister cousin, counterfeiting. Paying for tickets [...]
Phishing attacks, despite their long history, continue to be one of the greatest threats to data security. More than 200,000 new viruses are discovered every day, according to malware experts, and they’re usually out of circulation by the time they’re detected. So how does an organization protect data from vicious phishing and spear-phishing attacks? Here’s [...]
As mobile banking grows in popularity, so do the dangers of data breach and identity theft. In fact, these data security dangers are so significant they could threaten the future of the mobile financial services industry. To get a better understanding of the industry’s cyber security woes, a powerful trade group conducted a comprehensive survey [...]
Can you imagine losing backup disks containing information for 300,000 patients? Or having computer back-up tapes stolen? What if someone hacked into your network servers or lost important laptops? These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They’re real data breach cases that have occurred in recent years. Can this happen to you? You bet. The key is being [...]
Like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, we’d all like to think that we can depend upon the kindness of strangers. Unfortunately, Symantec recently reminded us (in case there was any doubt) that strangers are bound to let you down. In its Smartphone Honey Stick Project, Symantec intentionally “lost” 50 smartphones, all programmed with [...]
Unfettered mayhem, raining down from cyberspace, has birthed the need for new protection few would have envisioned just a few years ago: cyber insurance coverage. As coverage goes, cyber insurance is still a relatively new and emerging option that, despite its newness, is rapidly gaining traction among threat-weary businesses in every sector—healthcare, in particular, [...]
Our guest blogger this week is Karen Barney of the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). According to one recent study[i], more than 19 million health records have been compromised since August 2009. As the health care industry moves into the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), medical breaches have become a more significant concern. These [...]
