Data Security: News

IBM, LexisNexis and the Secret Service are among a group of corporations, government agencies and academic institutions that has formed to study and help solve identity management challenges around cybercrime, terrorism and narcotics trafficking.

A former employee at the US Department of State has pleaded guilty to illegally accessing the confidential passport records of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and other public figures.

After Adobe Systems asked them to keep quiet about their findings, two security researchers have pulled out of a technical talk where they were going to demonstrate how they could seize control of a victim's browser using an online attack called 'clickjacking.'

Nearly 99,000 payment cards used by customers at several Forever 21 retail stores may have been compromised in a series of data thefts dating back to August 2004.

One of the 11 people arrested last month in connection with the massive data theft at TJX Companies, BJ Wholesale Clubs and several other US retailers pleaded guilty yesterday to four felony counts, including wire and credit card fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Wealth management firm AMP has rejected established auditing and security frameworks for a procedure list hand-drawn by its own head of security.

A US House subcommittee is charging that a US$500 million IT project intended to "connect the dots" on terrorists and help prevent another 9/11 is a failure; it can't even handle basic Boolean search terms, such as "and, or and not."

Best Western International Monday acknowledged it suffered a data breach that exposed sensitive customer information at a European hotel, but strongly disputes claims that an attacker gained access to 8 million customer records with credit-card numbers. Best Western insists no more than a dozen customer records were compromised.

Eleven people have been charged or indicted in a massive identity theft and computer fraud scheme involving some of the largest data breaches in recent U.S. history, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

A recent study of Web browser installations showed that far too few are up to date with the latest security patches. And browsers aren't alone; as my dear old mum can attest, it can be hard to keep up with OS and application patches when all you want to do is use your computer for work. It should come as no surprise that many PCs are vulnerable to security exploits that could otherwise be prevented.

The high-profile sabotage this month of the city of San Francisco's fiber backbone network clearly shows both the extent of damage a disgruntled employee can cause and the need for controls to mitigate the risk of such actions.