All Entries Tagged With: "Data Breach"

Your Data for Ransom

This isn’t the first time I have heard about this type of thing, but it does appear to be a growing threat. According to Wikileaks.org, cyber attackers breached the Virginia Department of Health Professionals’ prescription monitoring website, downloaded a ton of data and are now demanding $10 million dollars in ransom for its return. [...]

Breach Severity

From the latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report it states “In contrast to the decrease in total disclosures, vulnerabilities rated as High severity increased 13% with respect to the second half of 2007, with roughly 48% of all vulnerabilities receiving a rating of High severity. This is still a 28% decline from the first half of [...]

Retail Data Breach Study Analysis

Perimeter eSecurity released a retail data breach study several months ago. There was an insightful article posted that I thought made some very good points. Be sure to read the comments at the bottom as well.

FBI & US Marshals Malware Infection

Here is the text from an article posted by the SANS institute…
“GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS AND HOMELAND SECURITY –Malware Infects Computers at US Marshals Service and FBI (May 21, 2009) Part of the computer system at the US Marshals Service was shut down Thursday morning after malware was detected. The decision was made to shut down Internet [...]

Pentagon Fighter-Jet Breach

There has been a lot of discussion about the recently disclosed Pentagon breach where classified plans regarding the 300 Billion Joint Strike Fighter Project were compromised. Most of the posts and articles I have been reading have discussed this in terms of the risk around those specific plans getting into the wrong hands. [...]

Lost or stolen laptop incur $50,000 loss

In a recent study by the Ponemon Insitute (see article) found that losing a laptop costs a firm on average $49,246 dollars after accounting for data loss, intellectual property, replacement, lost work time and legal expenses. Executives that lost laptops cost organizations about half that while managers who lost a laptop cost the company about [...]

Financial Data Breach Sources

Some good analysis from a post on Perimeter.
“In the study we just released on financial institution data breaches between 200 and 2008 we analyze the breach sources.
Hacking accounts for 42 percent of incidents but 55 percent of records compromised. This is the largest percent of incidents and records which is why financial [...]

Common Hacker Attack Pathways

In the 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report written by Verizon it discusses the most common methods of access (pathways) used to compromise networks. What they found from the 500+ caseload was the following:

Nearly half of all breaches exploited remote access and control systems. The report states that this is often remote access software [...]

Hannaford Breach Liability Case

In a SANS post recently it said “A federal judge will soon decide if Hannaford Bros. can be held liable for damages stemming from a data security breach late 2007 and early 2008. The attackers stole details of more than 4 million credit and debit cards. Attorneys for Hannaford have asked that the [...]

Financial Services Companies Have The Data Hackers Want

In the newly published study on financail data security breaches between 2000 and 2008, it reports that 12 percent of data breach incidents come from financial services companies, but account for over one third of all records compromised.
Financial services companies are often targeted by criminals because that is where the “crown jewels” are. [...]