NEWS & UPDATES

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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Back in the days where data breaches and hacks were a new phenomenon, ‘air-gapping’ was a term which meant that it was nearly impossible for computers to be breached.

Air-gapping is a security measure that isolates a computer away from a network. By doing so, the computer stands alone. The security method was thought to be 100 per cent effective as it allows data contained within the computer to be safe from hacking.

In the growing age of data leaks and hacks, is this the only way we can truly protect ourselves?
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The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) took action when hundreds of complaints poured in over spam text messages. The ICO, the regulatory body for Data Protection here in the UK, investigated the matter and found that two companies were responsible for millions of unwanted text messages being sent out to hundreds of thousands of people.

Silver City Tech Ltd and Oracle Insurance Brokers Ltd were responsible for using an affiliate service to spam people with annoying messages.
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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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Tesco Bank could be fined millions of pounds following its data breach that affected 40,000 customer accounts, with 20,000 of them actually having money taken from their accounts.

This is awful – and in an age where data breaches and cyber attacks are on the rise, people want to be assured that their data and their finances are safe; but that’s getting harder as it feels as though these big data breaches are happening all the time?
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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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The NHS are fast becoming a target and a victim of cyber-theft.

With reports from Reuters suggesting that medical records are worth ten times that of banking details, it does not come as a surprise that cyber-criminals are targeting these kinds of personal details.

There were reports of 30 “ransomware” attacks in the past 12 months towards healthcare trusts, which is very concerning when you note that healthcare trusts stores millions of patient details across the UK.
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The healthcare sector has the most data leaks than any other sector, and is often targeted by hackers because of the richness of the data that the healthcare sector has. Once hackers have hold of our data, it can be used to make huge amounts of money through various scams or through sale to marketing lists.

So it’s no wonder that hackers are eyeing up the healthcare sector for a potentially valuable payday.
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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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A serious data leak occurred at a GP surgery which resulted in an ICO investigation and a fine.

Mr A was the estranged ex-partner of the mother of his 5 year old son (Child B). The practice had been warned by the child’s mother not to let Mr A know of the whereabouts of Child B and her family because of family problems. This information was noted on the child’s medical records.

However, Mr A made a request to have the child’s medical records and provided a court order to show that he had parental responsibility. The practice did not have an adequate written procedure on how to deal with such a case, which resulted in Mr A being sent all of Child B’s medical records four days after the request had been made.
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