We focus on the latest news surrounding data breaches, leaks and hacks plus daily internet security articles.
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.
read more
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.
read more
Top digital security provider Gemalto released a Breach Level Index (BLI) report on cyber-attacks and compromised data records in 2016. They found a total of 1,792 data breaches last year alone, leading to around 1.378 billion data records being illegally accessed.
Since 2013, over 7 billion data records have reportedly been stolen across the globe. And these are just the ones that have been reported. To break this number down, this equals to:
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.
read more
Three’s recent data breaches have caused a rippling effect for many customers.
The newest of the breaches caused some customers to be without texting and telephone functions on 22nd April 2017, and also led to some texts going to totally random people rather than the intended recipients.
We have already taken cases on where personal text messages ended up in the inbox of someone totally random, and social media was filled with complaining customers asking for explanations.
read more
Protenus, a company who protect patient privacy in the U.S., compiles a monthly report on data breaches called the Protenus Breach Barometer (PBR) using data provided by DataBreaches.net. It analyses all breaches reported to the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) in the U.S or to the media in 2017.
Looking at breaches that compromised healthcare records for the past few months in 2017, January and February seemed relatively quiet with 388,000 and 200,000 patient records respectively. However, when compared to the massive spike of 1,519,521 compromised patient records in March, it makes the previous figures look insignificant.
read more
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.
read more
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.”
The ethical handling of data has always been the aim of data protection watchdogs and officials. Companies and organisations have the responsibility to handle data securely under the Data Protection Act (DPA), but there is a growing term of ‘ethically handling data’.
And this kind of data handling can be seen to make a difference.
read more
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.
read more
EasyJet admits data of nine million hacked
British Airways data breach: How to claim up to £6,000 compensation
Are you owed £5,000 for the Virgin Media data breach?
Virgin Media faces £4.5 BILLION in compensation payouts
BA customers given final deadline to claim compensation for data breach
Shoppers slam Morrisons after loyalty points stolen
Half a million customers can sue BA over huge data breach
Lawyers accuse BA of 'swerving responsibility' for data breach
The biggest data breaches of 2020
Fill out our quick call back form below and we'll contact you when you're ready to talk to us.