Archive for January, 2014

Top Data Protection Questions I Would Ask Your Vendors in 2014

I read an article this past week that gave readers a checklist on protecting data. One of the bullet points the author provided read something like this “Ensure your vendors are also secure”. Not a lot of prescriptive guidance followed.

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The Most Used Passwords, Top 25

ESET gathered information from a bunch of data breaches and compiled this list of the 25 most used passwords.  It really shouldn’t surprise anyone, but there’s a lot of weak passwords still being used today.  Take a look at the

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Target’s Partners Asymmetrical Risk Problem

Here’s a new twist on the Target hack:  Target’s payment partners could also be exposed to consume lawsuits and fines from the folks at Visa and Mastercard.  Classic example of asymmetric risk, interesting read and ramifications. http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20140114&id=17260087 Enjoy, –Kevin

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Neiman Marcus Hack

The retail chain Neiman Marcus reported last week that it was hacked in mid-December last year. Here’s an article from the Washington Post, not much details on the hack, but it did elude to more retailers that got hacked.  It’ll

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It’s the Season for … Identity Theft!

It’s time to do your taxes again, which means lots of personally identifiable information (PII) will be transmitted back and forth (hopefully securely).  Here’s an article on identity theft and how you can expect it to grow during the tax

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Looks Like the Target Data Breach Got Worse

Originally reported to be 40 million accounts breached, according to this news story the number is actually closer to 70 million.  Part of the article indicated that Target would miss its targets, speculating that it might be in part due

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Failure of Responsible Disclosure: SnapChat

Personally, I am a fan of responsible disclosure.  Putting customers (or other people’s customers) at risk might get the job done in terms of getting your point across.  But at the end of the day, you still put the customer

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Millions of Phone Numbers and Usernames Stolen from SnapChat

Over the holidays it was reported that millions of phone numbers and usernames were stolen from the private messaging service SnapChat. http://www.businessinsider.com/hackers-stole-millions-of-phone-numbers-and-usernames-from-snapchat–heres-how-to-see-if-youre-ok-2014-1#! No details about how the hack happened yet, but it’s still an interesting read. Enjoy, –Kevin

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