Research and retrieval of news articles by
Bennett Gold LLP, Chartered Accountants

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DATA BREACHES BECOMING TOO COMMON FOR CONSUMERS

For two years, an analyst for Countrywide Financial Group allegedly stole customers' personal financial information and sold batches of data for $500 each. Authorities say the analyst scored $50,000; the full cost to consumers - both in dollars lost through identity theft, and in time spent fixing botched credit reports - may never be known — MORE

NEW FROM APPLE: A PRIVACY NIGHTMARE?

As consumers flock to do everything they can with their smartphones, the biggest threat to rapid adoption are privacy fears. Aware of those fears, major retailers are going out of their way to stress that they respect privacy — MORE

NEW THREAT: HACKERS LOOK TO TAKE OVER POWER PLANTS

Cyber criminals have long tried, at times successfully, to break into vital networks and power systems. But last month, experts for the first time discovered a malicious computer code - called a worm - specifically created to take over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants — MORE

U.S. MILITARY CYBERWAR: WHAT'S OFF-LIMITS?

The United States should decide on rules for attacking other nations' networks in advance of an actual cyberwar, which could include an international agreement not to disable banks and electrical grids, the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency said Thursday — MORE

ALMOST ONE IN FOUR SECURITY BREACHES AFFECTED HEALTH CENTERS IN 2010: SURVEY

Almost one out of four data security breaches affected health care centers in 2010, according to reports, though the numbers are likely somewhat padded by mandatory breach reporting data added this year. Still, the numbers are leading privacy rights advocates to push for tougher disclosure laws — MORE

MASSIVE CHEQUE FRAUD OPERATION RUN BY HACKERS REVEALED AT BLACK HAT CONFERENCE

A three-month investigation by SecureWorks has uncovered an innovative cheque fraud operation that is estimated to have counterfeited $9 million in cheques in the past year — MORE

CYBERWARRIOR SHORTAGE THREATENS U.S. SECURITY

There may be no country on the planet more vulnerable to a massive cyberattack than the United States, where financial, transportation, telecommunications and even military operations are now deeply dependent on data networking — MORE

CANADIAN LAW FIRM LAUNCHES PRIVACY CLASS ACTION AGAINST FACEBOOK

The Canadian law firm 'Merchant Law Group' has launched a high profile class action suit against Facebook over the social network allegedly breaching the privacy of its users — MORE

TWITTER AND FTC SETTLE OVER PRIVACY BREACHES

In the FTC's first case against a social networking site, Twitter agreed to establish a security program that will be audited by another company. According to an FTC news release issued last week, Twitter "will be barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information." — MORE

THE ONGOING WAR AGAINST CYBERCRIME

In March, a portable media device with personal data for more than 3 million people was stolen from Minnesota-based Educational Credit Management Corp. It is believed to be the largest breach of its kind — MORE

US PLANS CYBER SHIELD FOR UTILITIES, COMPANIES

The US government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program — MORE

CYBER COMMAND CHIEF SAYS MILITARY COMPUTER NETWORKS ARE VULNERABLE TO ATTACK

The U.S. government is seeing "hints" that adversaries are targeting military networks for "remote" sabotage, the head of the Pentagon's recently launched Cyber Command said in his first public remarks since being confirmed last month — MORE

FCC SAYS MORE FOCUS NEEDED ON SECURITY

The Federal Communications Commission says it plans to boost inquiries into online security and privacy issues after recent security breaches involving Apple's iPad and Google's Street View cars that collected private data — MORE

FIVE WAYS TO KEEP ONLINE CRIMINALS AT BAY

"The Web opened up a lot more opportunities for attacking" computer users and making money, said Maxim Weinstein, executive director of StopBadware, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that receives funding from Google, PayPal, Mozilla and others — MORE

SOCIAL MEDIA SITES BREACHING PRIVACY POLICIES: REPORT

Under scrutiny for lax - or even broken - privacy policies, it has been uncovered that several popular social networking sites have been sharing personal data with advertising companies, despite a policy that says information is not shared without consent — MORE

GOOGLE, MICROSOFT, YAHOO BREACH PRIVACY LAWS, EU GROUP SAYS

Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. must limit the amount of time they keep Internet- search records to six months or justify the need for any longer storage periods, European Union officials probing possible breaches of EU data privacy laws said — MORE

POLL: CANADIAN BUSINESSES UNCONCERNED ABOUT PRIVACY BREACH RISK

Most Canadian companies aren't concerned about data breaches involving their customers' personal information - even though these same companies report they are collecting and holding more personal information than ever before, according to the results of a poll released on May 27 — MORE

IS THERE REALLY A CYBERWAR? TERM MIGHT BE MISUSED

Is there really a "cyberwar" going on? Some officials and computer security companies say yes, arguing that armies of hackers are stealing online secrets and using the Internet to attack infrastructure such as power grids — MORE

AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY COMMISSIONER LAUNCHES PRIVACY GUIDE

The Australian Privacy Commissioner has launched new information to guide businesses on how to handle personal information. Privacy Commissioner, Karen Curtis, described the Privacy Impact Assessment Guide (PIA Guide) as a tool for companies to use when working on projects that use the personal information of consumers — MORE

FACEBOOK FLAW EXPOSES PRIVATE INFORMATION

A major security flaw in Facebook has allowed users to see other people's personal information, and once again opened the social networking site to accusations of not securing user data effectively — MORE

HOW SOME EX-EMPLOYEES TURN TO CYBERCRIME

When a slumping economy and historically high unemployment rates dropped the axe on the country's workforce and left the survivors wondering if - or when - they'd be next, law enforcers and security experts braced themselves for what they considered would be an almost inevitable rise in data breaches and high-tech crimes. And they were right — MORE

THE AGE OF DATA PRIVACY

The financial consequences of inadequate data privacy and protection continue to grow. According to Ponemon Institute research, the average cost of a customer data breach grew from $4.5 million in 2005 to $6.7 million in 2008. In 2008 alone, the total cost of data privacy breaches in U.S. corporations was $721 million — MORE

PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD

Now, a study has concluded what lots of us have long suspected: Many of these irritating security measures are a waste of time. The study, by a top researcher at Microsoft, found that instructions intended to spare us from costly computer attacks often exact a much steeper price in the form of user effort and time expended — MORE

WHAT TO TELL MOM AND DAD ABOUT COMPUTER SECURITY

Ever get that tech support call from your parents saying, "My computer is slow all of a sudden" or "I have all sorts of weird things popping up on my screen"? You then troubleshoot the problems only to find out that malware, spyware, viruses or other such nastiness is the culprit. If you've been there, done that here are five basic security tips to provide to your parents that, if followed, are sure to credit you back hours of your time — MORE

RESEARCHERS TRACE DATA THEFT TO INTRUDERS IN CHINA

Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and United States computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defense Ministry — MORE

HOW PRIVACY VANISHES ONLINE

If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address? Probably not. Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced — MORE

INSIDE A GLOBAL CYBERCRIME RING

Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine's capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world's most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses — MORE

SECURITY BREACH NOTICES FOR CANADIAN DATA

More recently, Special Commissions at the federal level and in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia have recommended amending privacy legislation to mandate notification of material security breaches. Alberta is the first to act on this recommendation — MORE

USER IS THE WEAKEST LINK OF COMPUTER SECURITY

The issue of social engineering is fast becoming the topic of the day. The fact that we humans are social creatures predisposes us to become the weakest link in the proverbial security chain. The knee-jerk reaction to what we are up against seems to be to push more education and awareness about these types of threats — MORE

MOST PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND CYBER THREATS, SAYS FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY CHIEF

Michael Chertoff, who ran the Department of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009, says there's a reason that computer security isn't up to the threat posed by cyber criminals: Doing it right is too complicated for most people — MORE

GOOGLE PRIVACY EXECS CONVICTED - A TROUBLING PRECEDENT

Italian courts set a troubling precedent last week by convicting three Google executives in a criminal case. The case was brought by prosecutors in connection with a clip showing the bullying of a teenager with Down's syndrome. The clip was uploaded to Google Video in 2006 by the school children responsible for the bullying — MORE

SECURITY BREACH NOTIFICATION LAWS REINFORCE NEED FOR CYBER INSURANCE

According to Emily Freeman, executive director and partner of Lockton International's Technology, Media and Telecommunications Practice, the average cost of a security breach for a company is $15 per person. For a business with millions of customers, that can really add up — MORE

PODCASTS SOUND THE RIGHT NOTE

While Twitter, Facebook and YouTube grab the headlines, businesses from across Canada are tapping into one technology that deserves more media attention -- podcasts. This cost-effective and convenient form of social media is being used more and more by business people as a learning tool and to deliver their own messages — MORE

COST OF A DATA BREACH

The Ponemon Institute is out with its 5th annual "Cost of a Data Breach" study, and in an exclusive interview Dr. Larry Ponemon discusses: The current cost of a data breach - and how it's risen since 2009; Data breach trends across industry; What organizations should do to respond to or prevent breaches — MORE

IS THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT REALLY BEHIND CYBERATTACKS?

For those of us inside the computer security industry, there's nothing new about suspecting the Chinese government of malicious hacking. What's missing in this case, however, is evidence, and until that proof materializes, I refuse to point the finger at Beijing — MORE

TOP TEN DATA BREACHES AND BLUNDERS OF 2009

From stolen devices and phishing attacks to buggy apps and human blunders, 2009 was another banner year for data breaches. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, over 345 million records containing sensitive data have been involved in incidents within the United States since January 2005. But last year, one single breach compromised 130 million records. In an effort to do better this year, let's recount some of the worst data breaches reported in 2009 — MORE

STUDY FINDS GROWING FEAR OF CYBERATTACKS

A survey of 600 computing and computer-security executives in 14 countries suggests that attacks on the Internet pose a growing threat to the energy and communication systems that underlie modern society. The findings echoed alarms raised this month by Google after it experienced a wave of cyberattacks — MORE

UTILITIES, REFINERIES AND BANKS ARE VICTIMS OF CYBER ATTACKS, REPORT SAYS

Companies that run key public infrastructure assets like electric utilities, oil refineries and banks are regularly victims of the kind of cyber attacks that recently penetrated Google Inc., according to a new report by a former top U.S. homeland security official — MORE

STUDY: OF ALL BREACHES, THOSE CAUSED BY HACKING ARE THE COSTLIEST

The cost of data breaches rose slightly last year, but breaches resulting from computer hacking incurred by far the highest losses, according to a new report from privacy and data-security research firm Ponemon Institute LLC — MORE

DATA BREACHES COST MORE IF ENTERPRISES MOVE TOO FAST

In its fifth annual study on data breaches, the Ponemon Institute discovered that about 36 percent of participants notified their breach victims within one month, but ended up paying $219 per compromised record as opposed to the $196 paid by others. According to the study, a reason for this may be that companies moved too quickly through the process of detection, notification and related activities, and made costly mistakes along the way — MORE

NEW YORK ANNOUNCES DATA PRIVACY DAY TO PROTECT RESIDENTS FROM IDENTITY THEFT

More than 1.1 million records of New York State residents were impacted by over 400 data breaches in 2009, highlighting the need for vigilance among all entities that handle personal identifiable information in our State," said Governor Paterson. "We are committed to providing important information and resources to help businesses avoid data breaches, and assisting thousands of consumers who have fallen victim to identity theft — MORE

IT EXPERT ALARMED BY GOVERNMENTS' BROWSER WARNINGS

A Toronto Internet security expert is surprised and disturbed that two European governments are warning people not to use Internet Explorer because of security risks. France and Germany have urged Internet users to avoid Microsoft's browsers IE 6, 7 and 8 because of a weakness that allows hackers to infect the system — MORE

THE IMMINENT ARRIVAL OF CANADIAN BREACH NOTIFICATION LEGISLATION A WELCOME CHANGE FOR CONSUMERS

Following recent public breaches in the private and public sectors in Canada, Alberta's announcement of the arrival of a breach notification law is a welcome one — MORE

COMPUTER SECURITY FIRM LISTS CYBER THREATS OF 2010

A computer security firm has advised PC owners to keep their computer safe from new security threats in the new year. The experts revealed that the way people use the Internet and their computers has evolved significantly and so have the cyber criminals. They have changed their tactics accordingly — MORE

BEWARE WHO FIXES THAT BROKEN LAPTOP

Data-recovery services are responsible for a surprisingly large chunk of privacy breach incidents, in which companies lose control of personal data pertaining to employees or customers, according to a study released Tuesday by the privacy-focused group the Ponemon Institute — MORE

FLASH DRIVE FIRMS WARN OF SECURITY FLAW

SanDisk Corp. and Verbatim Corp. have joined Kingston Technology Inc. in warning customers about a potential security threat posed by a flaw in the hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption on their USB flash drives. The hole could allow unauthorized access to encrypted data on a USB flash drive by circumventing the password authorization software on a host computer — MORE

ADDITIONAL NEWS ARTICLES IN 2009 ARCHIVE

More E-Commerce ALERTS Inside Our Archives:
Latest - 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999