Data Breaches

This has been a big year for large data breaches. Earlier this year, Adobe suffered a major data breach affecting 38 million active customer accounts, some of which contained credit and debit information (there were 150 million records breached, but only 38 million had a password associated). Potentially more damaging is the breach of source code for Adobe products. It’s not an understatement to list the Adobe hack as one...

Over the weekend, I finally received notification from Adobe that my ID and “encrypted” password had been compromised in an incident back at the beginning of October. (Not to pile on Adobe here, but if you haven’t heard, the “encrypted” passwords were encrypted very poorly. Password cracking experts have had a field day analyzing the data. Sophos has a neat visualization of the poor quality of encryption used by...

A new study conducted by Javelin Research on behalf of Identity Finder has found that more than 25% of the 16 million victims of payment card information (PCI)-related data breaches in 2012 later suffered from identity theft. In absolute figures, that means that 4.4 million people suffered from identity theft as a result of their PCI being breached in the US. According the the study, victims at the highest...

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform that’s used by more than 220 million globally. As we highlighted in ‘Apps to get you fired or hired’, the use of the mobile application is also encouraged by over 50% of organizations.  This trust came into question when LinkedIn launched their new ‘Intro’ service in October, which they provocatively claimed was ‘doing the impossible on iOS’. LinkedIn Intro displays the senders profile...

I recently wrote an article for Corporate Compliance Insights on “What Every Corporate Audit Officer Should Comply With,” looking at the key responsibilities a CAO plays in many corporate and healthcare organizations. With privacy and compliance laws expanding, the need for transparency is increasing and how organizations use and share private information is evolving. The role of a Chief Audit Officer (CAO) is an essential one, holding key responsibilities...