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Data breach affects over 26,000 Debenhams customers

A recent hack saw thousands of Debenhams Flowers customer details compromised.

The hack was targeted at the staple retailer’s flowers website, but their primary website Debenhams.com is not thought to be affected.

Debenhams has reportedly notified affected customers, and issued a statement:

“Debenhams has taken immediate steps to minimise risk to customers affected and made contact with all those customers whose data has been accessed.”

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1 in 8 people in England suffer healthcare data breaches

According to recent figures, 1 in 8 people have suffered a healthcare data breach.

This is very worrying as healthcare data can be very private and sensitive information, and it can also be a goldmine for cyber-criminals.

Off the back of Friday’s monumental ransomware attack that hit almost one hundred countries around the world, and brought the NHS to an almost standstill, this is very worrying news.
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Colossal NHS cyber-hack attacks systems, forcing hospitals to move emergency patients

The NHS are being held to ransom after a huge cyber-attack has thrown IT and phone systems in to chaos.

As the networking system has been crippled by malicious software, huge amounts of IT systems have been shut down to prevent further damage, seriously impacting the level of care the NHS can provide.

Cyber criminals are reportedly holding the network systems hostage for an undisclosed sum while watching the nation’s health service struggle to cope. Physicians are understood to be using pen and paper to made medical notes, and real lives are in real danger.
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Justice is served: Two men plead guilty for TalkTalk cyber attack

On the 22^nd October 2015, telecommunications company TalkTalk suffered a huge cyber-attack. The result was some 157,000 of their customers’ personal details being breached, and this included 16,000 bank details being accessed.

The case has been somewhat concluded now as two men have pleaded guilty to the attack. At the Old Bailey courthouse, Matthew Hanley and Douglas Allsopp pleaded guilty to several offences.
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Google phishing scam affects up to 1 million users

You would’ve thought that Google would have their cyber-security under wraps, but it seems that following Yahoo’s cyber-attack back in 2014, no company is safe.

In this case, a phishing email was sent out to nearly 1 million Gmail users, and the email itself claimed to come from trustworthy contacts using Google Docs – a document sharing and editing service. The email notified users that a document had been shared with them and invited them to open it, and upon clicking on the “Open in Docs” button that was displayed, users were asked to give “Google Docs” permission to access their emails and manage their contacts.
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“Pagers are a huge cause of leaking data” – Out-of-date devices are causing the industrial industry to compromise its security

The ‘Leaking Beeps’ report shines a light on how employees from industrial environments are leaking data through their pagers.

For those industries still using pager technology to communicate with their employees, this may be very bad news to them. The report details how unsecure pagers are, and in this day and age, any cyber security flaw is always a real concern.
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UK charities fined for misusing donors’ private information

11 UK charities have been fined for breaching data protection laws.

11 of the UK’s top charities have been fined for misusing their donors’ (aka individuals who donate) personal information. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have issued fines to the charities for alleged misconduct and breaching the Data Protection act.
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Police officers have “unprecedented access” to millions of records

The Police Federation’s head of misconduct has revealed that a large number of the police force are “persistently” committing data breaches.

Fears have arisen that the police force are using technologies like the Police National Computer (PNC) and the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) “for non-work related reasons”, according to the Police Federation.

And it’s happening all the time.
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Data breaches don’t come cheap… £120 million to be exact…

Numerous security experts have noted that data breaches at the Financial Times Stock Exchange’s (FTSE) 100 firms have cost approximately £120 million in market value.

£120 million isn’t really loose change that organisations and firms should disregard; it should be a wake-up call!

According to the Breach Level Index, almost 1.4 billion data records were lost or stolen in 2016. The statistics showed an 86% increase from the previous year. The Breach Level Index notes that:

“…more and more organisations are accepting the fact that, despite their best efforts, security breaches are unavoidable.”

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Are large teaching hospitals more likely to have data breaches?

A new study finds that teaching hospitals are more likely to suffer from data leaks.

In a new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers found that larger health care providers and teaching hospitals are more likely to have data breaches. At the John Hopkins Carey Business School, Assistant Professor Ge Bai identified that around 1,800 data breaches were reported in the last 7 years, and he found that, the larger the hospital, the more data breaches occur.
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