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New Data Breach Incident at Leicester City Council

March 26th, 2011
USB flash drive

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The city council at Leicester has officially confirmed the loss of USB memory stick which contains the details of around 4,000 people. The news was officially confirmed to a local newspaper.

The device contained the medical details and home security codes for over 4,000 city residents and it was lost earlier in the month.

The people whose details have been lost were signed up to LeicesterCare which is a service providing support to the vulnerable city residents. The stolen USB stick contains details of medical information, 2,000 keysafe codes which also allow access to the homes of residents.

It is an irony that this news incidents happens almost after 2 years since the time when Leicester city council had signed up an undertaking with ICO for the loss of information of over 80 children. That incident was also related to an unencrypted memory stick.

The council’s official spokesperson said, “We can confirm we are investigating the possible loss of a data device that contains personal details of around 4,000 LeicesterCare users”. “At this time we have no reason to believe this data has been removed deliberately”.

Why are USB sticks lost?

Let’s try to answer a simple yet relatively unsolved question. Why is it that the USB sticks are lost or stolen? Well apparently, the single biggest thing which comes to our mind is the miniature and compact size of these devices. These devices are so small that it is relatively easier for anyone to pick them up at will. Not only that, sometimes people just tend to misplace these devices or put them in places where they tend to forget.

Off-course you can use tools mentioned in this blog-post to grab the attention of the finder, but it is always advisable to use data security software or data encryption software.

Coming back to the council they have started an operation to reset all codes and have reported the mission information to Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). ICO has off-course begun their own investigations and also alerted the police. The management team at council have asked the staff members to search for their desks just in-case there was a possibility of staff members taking the stick by mistake.

The Leicester city council has apologized to everyone who has been aftec. 59 year old Angie Beale who is a resident of St Andrew’s area at Leicester, has a keysafe at her home which ensures safety incase her 87 year old husband suffers from a fall. Angie is disappointed and says that ‘I think it’s disgusting they can lose something like that, especially with medical details that are personal.’

One of the 2000 affected people Angie Beales

Secure your Data with Alertsec

Following the essential guidelines is very necessary for data security in any organization. This news exemplifies the need for data protection applications. In an incident which highlights the need of Data encryption software and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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Alertsec is Offering Computer Protection Software for Mac OS X

December 26th, 2010
Mac OS logo
Support for Mac OS X Platform

Alertsec Xpress

Alertsec Xpress is used in all organizations that have recognized the need to protect their information. It offers computer protection software from Check Point as a fully customizable and pre-packaged data encryption software solution. Alertsec is the leading company in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and Personal Computers in an easy, convenient and cost-effective way.

Alertsec, a spin-off of Pointsec, has strong financial backing, long experience from encryption software and a security conscious organization. By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (previously known as Pointsec) software, we have created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption. In today’s scenario, information is an organization’s most important asset. As laptops are overtaking desktop PCs as the major source of computing and media storage, laptops frequently store an organization’s most valuable information. The only way to protect information stored on a PC or laptop is by using encryption. That is why laptop encryption is becoming increasingly important.

Service for Mac OS X

Mac Operating System is the world’s most advanced operating system. It is developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. It is a series of graphical user interface based operating systems. After Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X is the most active general purpose operating system in the use on the World Wide Web. Mac OS X comes with a variety of assistive technologies to help those with vision disabilities, including a built-in screen reader, screen & cursor magnification, high contrast settings and more.

Alertsec recently added support for the Mac OS X platform. We provide convenient and cost-effective computer protection software for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Mac OS X. Our customers range is from single-user sole traders and consultants to large multinational companies with offices around the globe.

FileVault and Its Back Drop

FileVault is a system that protects files on a Macintosh computer. FileVault uses encrypted file systems that are mounted and unmounted when the user logs into or out of the system. Early versions of FileVault were slow and caused system to temporarily hang when used with disk-intensive applications such as sound and video editing. The performance of FileVault has been improved in more recent versions of Mac OS X.

There are also certain limitations with fileVault. While migrating fileVault home directories there must be no prior migration to the target computer and the target must have no existing user accounts. If all these conditions are not fulfilled, then prior to migration, FileVault must be disabled at the source.

Check Point Full Disk Encryption Software

Check Point Full Disk Encryption software is trusted and the global leader with more than 4 million users worldwide. The Alertsec Xpress managed security service is based on the Check Point Full Disk Encryption software solution. This software provides the highest level of data security with multi factor pre-boot authentication and the strongest encryption algorithms. For a complete end user experience, the entire hard drive contents including the operating system and even temporary files are automatically encrypted. This software protects corporate information from unauthorized access and prevents costly data breaches when laptops are lost or stolen. It provides comprehensive platform support and fast compliance with the highest security certifications. It is highly scalable and rapidly deployable as fast as 50,000 seats per month.

Alertsec securely managed 24/7 helpdesk which provides a truly cost efficient solution. Our mission is to continuously improve our products and services in order to deliver the easiest and most cost-effective managed encryption service on the market. We are a part of the Durator Group which has been awarded the highest credit rating available. We have offices in the US, UK, Sweden and operate in many other countries around the world through partners.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped:

In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data.  Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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Biggest Data Leak in UK Companies, More Than 70% of UK Employees Admit to Data Theft

November 28th, 2010
A USB flash drive in the shape of a piece of i...
Alert: Data Leak in UK

For any company, data leaks are a huge worry, especially when so much personal and business data is stored. Most companies know they have information that is vital to their survival and that could damage the company if it falls into the wrong hands.

A survey has revealed that insider data theft is rife in the UK and theft of data by employees is common in UK companies. The most common methods of stealing the data were USB memory sticks (23%), personal laptops (23%), other portable storage (19%), mobile phones (13%), some 72% of more than 1,000 UK employees polled by security firm Imperva admitted taking data from an employer. The survey found 26% had stolen customer data, 25% had removed HR records, 25% had taken marketing data and 10% had lifted redundancy lists.

Almost half of those polled were aware of at least one colleague who had stolen data, and 69% believed a competitor had received information in this way. Intellectual property was the prime target, followed by customer information, the survey revealed. Faced with redundancy, 37% of respondents said they would want to take information with them, but that jumped to 70% if they knew they were about to be fired.

The most obvious problem is a lack of effective controls and data securityh software within UK companies, with a quarter of those polled saying their organisations did not restrict their access to sensitive information, and where there were controls in place, 44% of employees said they could get around these measures. “Companies are their own worst enemies, and this study confirms that,” said Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer at Imperva.

This is especially important because 59% of those polled said they would take information because they believed this information was rightfully theirs, including employees changing jobs. To overcome this and curb the loss of data to competitors, employers need to understand the problem, and define what constitutes intellectual property and why they retain ownership, says Shulman.

They need to re-examine what restrictions they have in place as a matter of urgency because they are not doing the job and are being circumnavigated, he says. According to Shulman, many businesses need to create policies that cover what is sensitive information, what is unacceptable behaviour, and what the penalties are for breaching such policies.

Another area of policy that companies typically neglect is regarding the removal of corporate information from personal devices when people leave. Some 85% of respondents said they had sensitive data on their home computer or mobile, 75% had a customer database, and 27% had some form of intellectual property.

But the survey found 60% of organisations did not have a policy to cover the removal of corporate information from personal devices as employees left the company and a quarter did not have any controls to restrict access to sensitive information.

Shulman believes that once UK law requires companies to report data breaches, there will be a growing awareness of just how much data is lost through employees in the course of normal business. “Effective tools will enable organisations to express their data protection policies rules based on the information they want to control,” he says.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped

In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply be reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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Holy Cross Hospital Suffers Data Breach

November 16th, 2010
Holy Cross Hospital
Holy Cross Image by reallyboring via Flickr

Hospitals are susceptible to data breaches and the latest incident at Holy Cross Hospital verifies and substantiates the claim. The massive data breach has resulted in loss of information of over 1500 patients and these were patients who had visited the emergency room of the hospital.

The information included:

  1. Patients’ names
  2. Addresses
  3. Social Security numbers and other personal details

According to the news reports in Sun Sentinel newspaper, this information was leaked by an employee called Natashi Orr. She worked at the hospital from April 2009 until September 2010 and was later on fired after an investigation carried over a 3 month period by federal agents. The team carrying out their investigation was unable to determine the exact number of patients beyond the preliminary number of 1500. Technicians discovered that 36 year old Orr had printed critical patient information in files.

The breach came to light when postal inspectors were able to recover the paper based personal records of 38 patients. This activity was traced to find out the 1,500 files accessed by Orr.

As a prevention measure, the Holy Cross had sent notification to all the 44,000 patients who visited the emergency room during the affected period. According to the hospital chief executive Patrick Taylor, the notification ensured that there was no misuse of the information. Patients are also being provided free credit monitoring services by the hospital.

According to Taylor, “While it may be impossible to absolutely prevent an employee from violating our values and policies for personal gain, we are determined to take all necessary steps to review and strengthen our administrative procedures to ensure that we are providing the highest level of data security possible”.

Also the newspaper has mentioned that this incident is the second of its kind at the South Florida Hospital. In-fact 3 years back, an employee who was working at the Weston based Cleveland Clinic was also arrested for the theft of personal details of over 1130 patients.  Post theft, this data was used on fraud medical bills. In-turn the data was also sold to a Naples based medical firm which had raised $8 million from all the fraud Medicare claims.

If you have suffered from the breach incident you can call the hotline at 800-388-4301. Also the cops have arrested people with charges at mail, wire and bank fraud — carry penalties up to 20 years in prison per count, with up to 10 additional years for each count of disclosing individual health information.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped

In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply be reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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Massive Data Breach at Hawaiian University

November 8th, 2010
Seal of the University of Hawai i System
Image via Wikipedia

Educational universities have been struggling with their data security norms and have failed to keep the confidential students data secure. A new case which highlights this fact is the huge data breach incident at Hawaiian University, which in-fact is the 2nd time such a case has happened in the university for the 2nd time this year. At stake is the most sensitive personal information of the students and alumni.

The affected alumni who are being notified this week include those who attended UH’s Manoa campus from 1990 through 1998 and during 2001 and students who attended the UH West Oahu campus during the fall of 1994 or graduated between 1988 and 1993. The hackers had managed to penetrate the server at Manoa campus. The attack exposed the names, social security number, driving licenses and social security numbers of around 53,000 students, employees and faculty members.

This time around last year, a similar case had happened when the details of 4500 students were officially posted on the website of the school. These details included names, social security numbers etc.

On their side, University of Hawaii officials have mentioned that case was reported to the FBI & Honolulu Police Department. As a matter of precaution the un-secured server was also disconnected by the officials to prevent further losses. In addition all the impacted alumni have been sent email notices. Email notices were also sent last week to impacted alumni mentioning that the university “has no evidence that anyone’s personal information was accessed for malicious intent.”

According to the Titus of Liberty Coalition similar breaches have been discovered in other universities across the United States. The notable ones include personal information of over 250,000 individuals which was held by a Florida state employment office.

At the moment it is difficult to track the level of misuse of this information.

University spokeswoman Tina Shelton said, “The university system is NOT aware of any actual security breaches raised by the inadvertent exposure by the UH West Oahu professor.”

Naturally the students are disturbed by the security breach and graduate Paul Philpott is one of them. He is one of the alums whose personal information was exposed and has spoken to other friends and classmates as well.

Philpott said in an email, “None of us have given any authority to any person or institution to have our identities used, put on the Internet, or to be used in a study on us”. “For those affected that I have talked with, explanations and help should be immediate and detailed”.

The Titus of Liberty Coalition mentioned in a telephone interview. “It’s my impression that the University of Hawaii is a few years behind in its IT (information technology) security,”

He also added, “This could have been prevented if the university had a policy of scanning its IT system for records containing personal information like social security numbers,” he says, adding software programs and information technology experts are available to perform such searches.

All the potentially affected students can call (808) 956-6000 during weekday business hours or check the website at http://www.uhwo.hawaii.edu/idalert

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped

In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software.The threat could have simply be reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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