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Dating website Guardian Soulmates data breach

Following on from the several big recent hacking scandals where million of users’ personal details have been compromised, Guardian Soulmates – a dating service provided by The Guardian newspaper – are the latest victim of a cyber-hack.

Users of the dating website reportedly received sexually explicit emails following on from the hack. Soulmates usernames and email addresses were exposed by an unknown third-party service provider, according to Guardian News and Media (GNM).
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InterContinental Hotel Group reveals thousands of guests had their credit card details stolen

Owners of Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza suffer huge cyber attack

The giant hoteliers InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) have issued their worrisome findings after conducting an internal investigation into their hotels.

The huge company – owners of popular hotel chains Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza – began their investigation when malicious software was detected on their front desk systems late last year. Whilst the breach into their systems were detected as early as 29 September 2016, traces of the malware is suspected to have remained until March of this year.
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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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Cyber-attacks increased by 300% in 2016

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:

• 4,501,854 records lost or stolen every day
• 187,577 every hour
• 3,126 every minute
• 52 every second.

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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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