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Google employees fall victim to data breach

A number of employees at Google have been warned that some of their personal information may have been compromised because of a third party data breach.

Sabre Hospitality Solutions is a platform allowing users to plan trips and book hotels through their site. Sabre developed the SynXis Central Reservation System to allow guests, hotels and travel agencies from all over the world to book travel and accommodation through the unified service.

Google uses Calson Wagonlit Travel as the middle-man to arrange work-related trips for its employees. Unfortunately, Sabre’s database was hacked, meaning personal information belonging to Google’s recently travelled employees may have been compromised.
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Data breaches are costly: not just financially but they impact seriously on consumer confidence

Data breaches have become the talk of the town in the privacy world for decades. The apparent lax attitude of some companies and organisations appears to have resulted in data breach costs soaring.

The 2016 Cost of Data Breach Study, undertaken by Ponemon and IBM, found that the average total cost of a data breach increased from £2.37 million in 2014 to £2.53 million in 2015.

And we can only see it growing and growing…
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Gloucester City Council fined £100,000 for “allowing” Heartbleed cyber-attack

Gloucester City Council have let down employees after cyber-attackers accessed their personal details. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has imposed a monetary penalty of £100,000 for their reportedly lax attitude.

On 7^th April 2014, there was the vulnerability known as ‘Heartbleed’ which gathered huge media attention. The vulnerability was quickly addressed as the affected software (‘OpenSSL’) was released which fixed the vulnerability. Unfortunately, the vulnerability was overlooked as Gloucester City Council was in the process of outsourcing its IT services to a third party company on 1^st May 2014.
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Indiana Medicaid data breach may affect an “undisclosed” number of patients

Medicaid was started in the U.S to help families and individuals who struggle to pay for medical care. The social healthcare program is run by the government and provides financially limited people with free health insurance.

As we know, organisations like this are just as vulnerable as others to data breaches, data leaks, and cyber hacks.

In this instance, patient data was reportedly accidentally made live through a hyperlink (internet web link). The hyperlink was publicly accessible, meaning anyone who clicked on it could see the medical information contained on it.
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2017: The year of the healthcare data breaches!

Health data breaches have seen an unprecedented rise in recent times. Overwhelmed and untrained healthcare administrators appear to be making simple errors in some cases, and as a result, millions of people are at risk of their personal information being released.

On top of this, cyber criminals are targeting hospitals, GP practices and University health research facilities to steal and hold medical data for ransom. In the ever-advancing digital world, our cyber security measures are failing to keep up, and it seems like the healthcare sector still remains way off the mark.
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Recent ICO data security incident trends

A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential data by, say, employees, cyber-hackers, political activists or national governments.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the U.K.’s independent privacy watchdog who have the responsibility of upholding information rights for the benefit of the public interest. Though there isn’t a legal responsibility on companies and/or organisations to report all data security breaches, it’s considered good practice to do so.

Here’s a look at some of the recent data security incident trends from the ICO.
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Morrisons fined £10,500 for breaching data privacy rights

The 4^th largest supermarket chain in the U.K. has been fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’) for breaking data protection laws in regards to how personal information is being used when sending marketing emails.

The ICO undertook an investigation into the supermarket chain after allegations were made by an individual that WM Morrison Supermarkets PLC (‘Morrisons’) were sending emails that customers had previously opted out of.

The Commissioner wrote to Morrisons on 28^th November 2016 notifying them of the complaint made against them.
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AA fails to notify their customers of data breach

Further to the AA data breach that occurred on 22^nd April 2017, there’s been further backlash as AA reportedly failed to notify customers of the breach.

The personal information that was breached related to customers of the AA’s online shop, operated by a third party, which sells maps, car accessories and other products to retailers and individuals.

Due to a server malfunction, personal data stored on two database backup files was accessible to the public.
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Government digital service department leaks personal information

Many people may have a false sense of security that the Government are able to protect us and our data. Over the years, this belief has decreased massively given there are growing trends of data breaches, with hacks and leaks scarily becoming the norm.

This is exemplified in the Government’s digital service website – www.data.gov.uk – who recently fell victim to a security breach. A spokeswoman said that a database containing usernames and email addresses was discovered on a system which was accessible to the public. This was only discovered during a routine security review.

So, if the government can’t protect themselves, how can we expect them to protect us?!
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Health insurance company in the U.S. pays out a record $115 million after millions had personal data hacked

The U.S.’s second largest health insurance company, Anthem Inc, has agreed to pay out a record-breaking settlement over a huge data breach from two years ago.

Around 79 million people had their personal information compromised during the hack, and it’s safe to say Anthem are paying for their mistakes given the settlement. Data breach victims include current and former clients, and it’s thought that lawyers will need to sift through a lot of information to pinpoint exactly who was affected, how much data was compromised, and the impact the breach had on them.
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