September 6, 2010
A lost USB stick that contained police information described as ‘dynamite’ was found in the street outside a station. According to reports, a stick containing more than 2,000 pages of highly sensitive and confidential information, intended to be seen only by senior officers, was found on a pavement near a Greater Manchester police station. The USB stick was prominently branded with the Greater Manchester Police logo and included detailed strategies for acid and petrol bomb attacks, blast control training and [...]
September 3, 2010
A third of IT managers are unaware of social networking use on their networks. While Web 2.0 applications have been adopted by 99 per cent of end-users to support business processes, 38 per cent of IT professionals believe there is no social networking present on their networks. Read the rest of the article here. FaceTime enables organisations to eliminate the risks associated with “below-the-radar” applications through award-winning solutions that secure and control greynet communications in the enterprise. Gradian have partnered [...]
August 31, 2010
Yorkshire Building Society has been found to be in breach of the Data Protection Act by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). An unencrypted laptop, belonging to the former Chelsea Building Society that had recently merged with Yorkshire Building Society, was stolen from its Cheltenham premises. The laptop contained a substantial part of the CBS customer database and was recovered within 48 hours. Forensic investigations revealed that none of the data had been accessed during that time, although there had been [...]
August 26, 2010
The largest data breach ever suffered by the US military was carried out using a USB Flash drive, the US deputy defense secretary William Lynn has revealed. In an article in the journal Foreign Affairs, Lynn recounted how in 2008 a military laptop in the Middle East was accessed by an operative from a foreign government who installed malware via a USB Flash drive. Read the rest of the article here
ICO slams Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust after it loses patient records. Yet another NHS Trust has been found in breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA) after it lost sensitive patient records stored on an unencrypted CD. Data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) explained that the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust lost a CD containing over 100 records from the Intensive Care Unit of New Cross Hospital’s Heart and Lung Unit. The CD, which was unencrypted with [...]
August 25, 2010
The UK operation of Zurich Insurance has been fined £2.27m by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for losing personal details of 46,000 customers. It is the highest fine levied on a single firm for data security failings. Margaret Cole, the FSA’s director of enforcement and financial crime, said: “Zurich UK let its customers down badly.” Stephen Lewis, chief executive of Zurich UK, said: “This incident was unacceptable.” The data on policyholders, including in some cases bank account and credit card [...]
May 17, 2010
Mergers and acquisitions can appear to be a double edged sword. To the average onlooker, the time it takes to integrate systems and processes might well overshadow the business benefits of the deal. Plus there’s the puzzle of how to communicate with customers, migrate end users, re-branding and cost. However, the recent news that Symantec is to acquire PGP is different. Symantec are very experienced in this field – and so, in an indirect way, is Gradian. Over the years [...]
March 2, 2010
We’ve all experienced that feeling of being completely anonymous on the web – not because we’re visiting sites we shouldn’t, but simply because whilst working from home or surfing the net in your lounge at home you sometimes remember that there are millions of other nameless, faceless people doing the very same thing at the very same moment. They don’t know who or where you are – whether you’re in a suit or slippers, and vice versa. Although the Internet [...]
May 12, 2009
This Ponemon Institute annual survey documents the high costs that result when companies lose customer data.
United Kingdom – “2008 Annual Study: U.K. Cost of a Data Breach”
United States – “2008 Annual Study: U.S. Cost of a Data Breach”
Germany – “2008 Annual Study: Germany Cost of a Data Breach”
Banks are putting their customers at risk by using standard security questions, such as mother’s maiden name, to confirm identities online or over the phone, according to Symantec.
