We previously noted that in late 2016, Yahoo disclosed that it had experienced multiple data breaches relating to what turned out to be roughly three billion of its accounts. At that time, the initial breach, which was reported in September of 2016, had already resulted in several proposed class action complaints. Now, United States District … Continue Reading
As we noted earlier this year, Saks Fifth Avenue LLC, Saks Incorporated, and Lord & Taylor previously disclosed, on April 1, 2018, that some of their customers’ personal information may have been compromised in a data breach. Those companies all share the Canadian business group Hudson’s Bay Company (collectively with Lord & Taylor LLC, Saks … Continue Reading
Adidas has published a customer warning that its U.S. customers could be at risk from a security incident it discovered on June 26, 2018. In the warning, Adidas says that it will reach out to certain customers who purchased goods through its website with more details about the incident. It has been reported that the … Continue Reading
On June 27, 2018, the State of Connecticut Treasurer’s Office announced that about $1.4 million had been stolen from Connecticut Higher Education Trust (CHET) college-savings accounts. This theft resulted from data security breaches that occurred in early June, 2018. Connecticut State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier confirmed that TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing Inc. (TIAA-CREF), the CHET Direct … Continue Reading
On June 4, 2018, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed into law Public Act No. 18-90 “An Act Concerning Security Freezes on Credit Reports, Identity Theft Prevention Services and Regulations of Credit Rating Agencies” (P.A. 18-90). This bill makes several revisions to Connecticut laws concerning identity theft, most notably by newly prohibiting credit reporting agencies … Continue Reading
Data breaches continue to be an issue for health care providers, as indicated when looking at breaches reported to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), as required by HIPAA. In the first three months of 2018, there were 77 breaches of protected health information (PHI) reported to OCR, which included more than one million patient … Continue Reading
SunTrust Banks Inc. (SunTrust) recently notified 1.5 million customers that information, including their names, addresses, telephone numbers, and account balances, was taken by a former employee. Curiously, although SunTrust indicated that no customer Social Security numbers or driver’s license information were included in the information lifted by the former employee, it is offering free identity … Continue Reading
According to a notification letter sent to an unknown number of patients, Blue Shield of California (Blue Shield), “shared” the protected health information of members with an insurance broker who was not supposed to receive it. Apparently a Blue Shield employee sent the information via an email to the broker during the 2018 Medicare Annual … Continue Reading
Unfortunately, it was another busy data breach week. Here’s a summary of the major ones. Delta Airlines admitted in a statement that the payment card data of several hundred thousand customers might have been compromised by malware between September 26 and October 12, 2017, through a third-party vendor ([24]7.ai that provides online chat services to … Continue Reading
We previously noted last month that only two states had not enacted a data breach notification law to date—South Dakota and Alabama [see related post]. South Dakota passed the finish line right before Alabama, but both states have now joined the rest of the nation in enacting data breach notification laws for their citizens. Last … Continue Reading
Facebook reports that the personal data of 87 million Facebook users, mostly located in the United States, “may have been improperly shared” with British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. Previous estimates put the possible scope of improper sharing at about 50 million users. The increased number was calculated by Facebook by totaling the friends of … Continue Reading
Oregon Governor Kate Brown recently signed a new data breach reporting law (S. 1551) that toughens the state’s existing requirements. The new law requires companies to notify individuals within 45 days after a data breach has been discovered, unless a delay in notification is requested by law enforcement. It expands the definition of personal information … Continue Reading
Orbitz, the travel booking entity that is owned by Expedia, has confirmed that it has “identified and remediated a data security incident affecting a legacy travel booking platform.” This means that one of its older websites that are used by customers to book their travel plans was hacked. The statement says that Orbitz uncovered evidence earlier … Continue Reading
Verizon recently issued its Protected Health Information (PHI) Data Breach Report, which is always an interesting read. Not surprisingly, Verizon’s report concludes that based upon analysis of 1,360 security incidents involving the health care sector, 58 percent of the incidents were caused by insiders and 42 percent were caused by external threats. Insider threats can … Continue Reading
The recently released Protenus Healthcare Breach Barometer report notes that in January, 2018, at least 473,807 patient records were compromised in 37 breaches reported to the Office for Civil Rights. Twelve of the reported breaches were attributable to insiders, which was 32 percent of the data breaches reported in January. Seven of those incidents were … Continue Reading
The last two states which have not passed data breach notification laws are Alabama and South Dakota. Sometimes we make jokes about these states as they are so late to the data breach notification table (California was the first state to pass a data breach notification law in 2002) and they seem not to care … Continue Reading
On January 30, 2018, EDUCAUSE, a higher education technology association, submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of Education describing concerns that it had with the Federal Student Aid (“FSA”) ability to protect federal student financial aid data. EDUCAUSE’s members include IT professionals from over 1,800 colleges and universities as well as other organizations. First, … Continue Reading
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey recently announced that her office will be launching a new online data breach reporting portal for companies to use to report data breaches to her office pursuant to the Massachusetts data breach notification statute. The use of the portal is voluntary and does not relieve companies of their statutory obligations, … Continue Reading
Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences (OSUCHS) has notified 279,865 patients that their protected health information may have been compromised as a result of a hacking incident. OSUCHS has determined that an unauthorized individual gained access to its system housing Medicaid billing information on November 7, 2017, but it is unable to determine whether … Continue Reading
It has been predicted that the healthcare industry will continue to be lambasted with ransomware in 2018. It has also been predicted that attackers will move from taking sensitive information hostage to sabotage, service disruption, physical damage and malicious deletion or changes to the integrity of data. Unfortunately, the year has started off true to … Continue Reading
Ancestry.com has confirmed that RootsWeb, its free website for individuals to search genealogy, recently had a security vulnerability on its server that exposed a file containing the usernames, email addresses and passwords of 300,000 users. The compromise occurred in 2015. According to Ancestry.com, most of the accounts that were compromised were from free trial or … Continue Reading
PayPal has acknowledged that TIO, the Canadian payments processing company that it acquired in July 2017 has suffered a data breach that compromised the information of up to 1.6 million users. TIO processes utility and other bill payments and has over 60,000 kiosks in North America. PayPal suspended TIO’s operations in November as it “did … Continue Reading
On December 6, 2017, Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) disclosed that health information of 18,470 patients may have been viewed or stolen. HFHS became aware of the incident on October 3, 2017 after employee credentials were accessed or stolen. According to a statement published on HFHS’ website, Social Security numbers and credit card information were … Continue Reading
The news about data breaches always seems to be dire lately. Some good news: data breaches in the healthcare industry were lower in October than in September, based upon reportable data breaches to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Note that only breaches involving more than 500 records have to be disclosed to the OCR … Continue Reading
