NEWS & UPDATES

Although there are multiple lawsuits being made against Yahoo, the technology company may face a worldwide class action.

Back in August 2013, Yahoo reportedly compromised more than 1 billion accounts making it “one of the biggest data breaches in digital history”. It was reported that an “unauthorised party” hacked into the email accounts. Yahoo have since theorised that the hacks were “state-sponsored”.
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The Police Federation for Northern Ireland (PFNI) has called for a full inquiry after they were alerted to a data breach that may have put lives at risk.

The inquiry was prompted after a former investigating officer who worked at the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (PONI) was arrested for allegedly stealing sensitive information. The information is believed to have security details and identification of service police officers.

Needless to say, this data in the wrong hands could put lives in danger…
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The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation has introduced a web-based data breach notification archive.

The archive gives access to the public and media to allow greater transparency in data breaches, highlighting those that fail to notify their customers/users of a data breach.
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Anthem, one of the largest health insurers in the U.S., compromised the personal details of around 80 million of their members and employees. Anthem disclosed what is dubbed as “the largest data breach in healthcare history” back in 2015.

Now, it has been revealed to the public that a foreign government may have been behind the cyber-breach.
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A lot of data hacks and breaches hit the headlines last year. Some of them happened a few years ago and were only revealed in 2016.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest ones to hit the news.
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The Community Health Plan of Washington (CHPW) – provider of health insurance in Washington – issued a press release on the 21^st of December concerning a data breach that may have affected up to 400,000 current and former members of the organisation.

This is yet another large data leak involving a healthcare sector – usually the biggest culprits in terms of data leaks, which is made worse by the sensitive nature of the data that can be breached.
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In the past few decades, technology has come on leaps and bounds. You can drive cars without steering them, switch appliances off at home without being in the house, and even book GP appointments and view your medical records using a mobile portal!

But just because the technology is there, it doesn’t necessarily mean people trust it enough to use it.

A recent study was made to see just how much people trusted using health technology portals to process their medical data. Generally speaking, the study revealed that a huge majority of us are sceptical of such technology, mostly because we fear data breaches.
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The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently fined a Historical Society £500 for a data breach.

The monetary penalty was imposed on a Historical Society after a laptop, containing details of people who had donated or loaned artefacts to the society, was stolen among other things. This happened whilst an employee was working on a laptop from home.
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Yahoo seems to have ‘put their foot in it’ following revelations about the massive data breaches.

In a recent company’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it revealed that many employees knew of the hack since 2014 and that the data breach had been a ‘recent investigation’ when the company announced the news on September 22.
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Although many businesses and organisations should have in place a security team and a ‘data breach preparedness plan’, it is said that many do not review, update, or actually practice it.

I then ask: what’s the point of having such a plan?
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There is a clear question about an abuse of power here, as well as the fact that this amounts to a potential breach of supposedly secure data.

Police Constable Andrew Green accessed a number of intelligence systems in which he had been prohibited access from previously. It’s reported that a ‘software glitch’ allowed PC Green access to the system he wasn’t supposed to be able to get in to, which is serious enough; but this also raises questions about the cyber-security of the system, and how PC Green could even have access to the system again at all.
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In the first half of the 2015, the UK reportedly suffered the most data breaches in Europe in 2015 according to data from Gemalto.

The SIM card and digital security vendor claimed in their Breach Level Index report that 63 breaches took place in the UK in the first six months of 2015. Germany came next with 8, followed by the Netherlands with 6.

However, it only equated to 3.4% (8.3 million) of the global total of 246 million breaches. In comparison with America, who equated to 49%, and Turkey with 26%, the UK pales in comparison; but the figures are still very high.
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