Data Security Breaches

VA to pay $20M over data theft  The Veterans Affairs Department agreed Tuesday to pay $20 million to veterans for exposing them to possible identify theft in 2006 by losing their sensitive personal information.

Medical Mutual of Ohio reports missing computer disks   Health insurer Medical Mutual of Ohio said 11 computer disks containing personal information on thousands of Ohio retirees are missing and are believed to be somewhere in the U.S. Postal Service. ... Read More

Franklin Savings and Loan (Cincinnati, OH) An unauthorized person gained access to a database containing personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, account balances and Social Security numbers. (Estimated number of records: 25,000)

When credit-card data is breached, who's on the hook? The retailer BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. is not known for doing things on a small scale.

So when BJ's announced in 2004 that it may have lost credit-card information on some of its customers, it left Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union with a big problem.  Nearly five years later, PSECU, BJ's and the bank that works with the retailer are still locked in an equally big legal fight over who should pay for the solution. Berks County-based Sovereign Bancorp Inc. is also involved, on PSECU's side.  ... Read More

Boston: US man pleads guilty in retail data breach  A man identified as a key player in a ring charged with the largest data theft case in history has pleaded guilty and agreed to provide authorities with information about others involved.

Hidden losses of our data: ANOTHER week, another raft of headlines on the latest data-breach calamity (News and Comment, last week). Bank customer details sold on eBay and lost Home Office data sticks may be unsettling but far more disturbing is the thought that many more such breaches are going unreported. . .... Read More

Ministry of Justice reports nine data breaches  The Ministry of Justice has reported nine data-breach incidents which may affect around 45,000 people. According to a report, the Ministry suffered a breach in June 2007 when discs containing 27,000 supplier records were shown to ‘a representative of a newspaper'. Although the Ministry has claimed that "the data was not lost or stolen but some examples were shown" it has defended itself by saying that all the data, including supplier names, addresses and, in some cases, bank details, was subsequently recovered or destroyed. .... Read More

VeriSign suffers data breach after July laptop theft   VeriSign, the digital certificate vendor responsible for the internet's .com and .net domains, suffered a data breach last month when a laptop was stolen from an employee's vehicle.  .... Read More