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Archive for the ‘AlertSec Xpress’ category

10 years in prison for stealing $1.4 million Internet Telephone Service:

September 28th, 2010

A hacker named Edwin Pena, 27, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing $1.4 million internet telephone service. He was an unauthorized wholesaler of Internet-based phone services. He sold more than 10 million minutes at deep discounts to customers.

Robert Moore, who was appointed by Pena to help him in his activities, got imprisonment for 2 years. Pena bought large assets in the name of his girlfriend by the money he stole from this act. He bought a Miami home, a 40-foot motor boat, a 2004 BMW M3, a 2005 BMW 325, and a 2005 Cadillac Escalade EXT.

The judge rejected his defensive arguments saying, “He is a crook, I don’t find he has any credibility when he says he’s a changed person.” The case is U.S. v. Pena, 09-cr-103, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Newark).

This all is due to lack of strong data security and data encryption. Companies using sensitive data should hire IT security companies which provide data security software solutions.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped

The above 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.

Hacker Gets 10 Years for $1.4 Million Internet Theft (businessweek.com)
VoIP hacker sentenced to 10 years (go.theregister.com)

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Posted in AlertSec Xpress, Alertsec Express

Tags: Cadillac Escalade Cryptography Miami New Jersey Newark New Jersey security Telephone United States

Department Of Veteran Affairs begins posting Data Breach report online

August 16th, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has begun posting reports about data breaches on its website, once again showcasing its transparent policies.

Since VA is the largest healthcare organization on the planet and has thousands of contractors, it experiences a variety of data breach incidents each month. It must notify Congress monthly about both routine and major data breaches, a requirement imposed in the aftermath of several security break-downs during the past year.

For example, a report (PDF) from July 5 to August 1 shows the agency lost two PCs, 13 BlackBerry devices and six laptops. It also reported 103 of so-called “mis-mailed” incidents, and 90 “mis-handling” incidents. The report said, all of the lost laptops were encrypted. Now, the public can see those reports for themselves, as VA has begun to post them online since August 11.

“We gain a lot with transparency,” VA chief information Roger Baker said about making the report public. “When you see what normally happens and how they are handled, it lends a bit of confidence what we’re going to do when more serious ones occur,” he added.

“For example, losing smart phones is a common security problem at VA, as it is elsewhere. However, it’s difficult to impose consequences for the losses. There isn’t a cost benefit to denying the issuance of another smart phone to physicians and other professionals who lose them because the devices are inexpensive relative to the productivity gains they provide,” Baker said.

“I don’t take losing a couple of hundred dollars of taxpayer money lightly,” he said. “But compared with a doctor that we may be paying $300,000 a year, I don’t want them spending time trying to figure how to get a new Blackberry. I want them to have a new Blackberry in their hands so they can be certain of providing patient services.”

VA also has a policy of encrypting mobile devices in order to reduce the potential for the misuse of personal or confidential information by making the device unusable when it it lost or stolen.

Since taking his position, Baker has made a conscious effort to streamline the IT operations at the VA, with data security being a priority. The posting of the reports also shows how far the agency has come in terms of transparency and accountability for its IT operations, which has been criticized for serious in-efficiency in the past.

Also, Baker has put into place an accountability program that flags IT projects behind schedule or over budget. This program saved the agency $54 million in its fiscal-year 2010 budget.

Want to prevent breach?

Have you been affected by data breach? Do you think that your organization is susceptible to a potential security breach? For further information visit our website where you will learn about our encryption software and other security protection methods.

A trusted way to protect information stored on a PC or laptop is by using encryption. Alertsec Xpress offers full disk encryption and is therefore superior to other encryption methods when comparing security, performance, robustness and ease-of-use for both administrators and users. To find out more, see Tech Specs.

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Posted in AlertSec Xpress, Data Protection, data breach

Tags: data breach data security Encryption Personal computer Roger Baker security United States Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Affairs Department

$15000 spent by Fort Worth Medical Clinic in notifying patients of theft

August 10th, 2010

In June, four computers containing patients’ personal information including Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates and diagnosis were stolen from Fort Worth allergy clinic.

This week Fort Worth Allergy and Asthma Associates spent $15,000 mailing letters notifying the clinic’s 25,000 patients of the burglary. Dr. Robert Rogers said “in terms of sensitive clinical information that could be taken, we’re an allergy clinic so I don’t think there was anything embarrassing taken, it’s bad enough that they did get identity information like Social Security numbers”.

“The cost of doing the mailing is more than cost of replacing the equipment,” Rogers added.

Since September, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has required that a data breach involving unsecured protected health information of more than 500 people must be reported to the federal government. Also, all the affected parties and major news agencies must be informed of the data breach.

“None of the stolen property has been recovered. But to prevent a similar loss, all personal information is now stored in an off-site server with access allowed only through a secured, encrypted virtual private network”, Rogers said.

Prevent Data Breach with Alertsec Xpress

If you use a data security software a theft would simply be reduced to an insurance matter and cost of the hardware plus time to rebuild the laptop. 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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Posted in AlertSec Xpress, computer security software, data breach

Tags: data breach data security Fort Worth Fort Worth Texas Health insurance Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Personally identifiable information Robert Rogers (soldier) Social Security number United States

Key findings from the Computer Theft survey

August 6th, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

The main concern while running a business is keeping your computing devices like desktops, laptops etc. and their data secure. The portability offered by laptops, increases their chance of being stolen as people are constantly leaving them unattended at public places. Many a times these devices are left behind at restaurants, subways, coffee shops, airports etc. Although the insurance company may cover the hardware, the files and data on the machine may eventually be untraceable and forever lost.

Recently BSI carried out their 8^th Annual Computer Theft Survey in the United States. Here are the key findings from that survey:

More than 5.5 Million computers were stolen in the United States in the last 3 years.
More than half (58.7%) of the respondents have been a victim of computer theft in the last year.
According to FBI, 97% of unprotected computers (i.e. computers that do not use any data encryption software or computer security software) are never recovered.
68% of the devices stolen were laptops, followed by desktops (10%) & others like PDA’s, iphone etc. (22%)
67% of computer theft occurred while respondent was mobile (moving about),
91% of respondents did not use data encryption software to encrypt the proprietary data on their stolen device.
Average total replacement cost of each stolen computing device was $43,264.66.
71% of respondents reported downtime due to computer theft ranging from several days to more than a month.
Only 21% of those surveyed used extensive data protection like dedicated data encryption software, but about 70% did not use any safeguard or security protection at all.

These numbers are very similar to the numbers in the surveys done earlier on this issue, clearly indicating that people are not doing anything more to protect their data than they were doing earlier.

If you carefully analyze the survey data, you will notice that only 3% of stolen computing devices are recovered; even then only 9% people are using data encryption software to protect their data.

Encrypt your Data for peace of mind!

We spend huge sums to protect our internal networks, but forget that there are people carrying laptops that are connected to these internal networks. These laptops are equally vulnerable to theft & hacking. This fact has been highlighted in the survey, according to which 67% of computer thefts occurred when the respondent was outdoors.

By using laptop encryption software, we could have greatly enhanced the laptop security as there is no way that the information is compromised if the laptop is lost or stolen. A theft would simply be reduced to an insurance matter and cost of the hardware plus time to rebuild the laptop.

Secure your data using Alertsec

Alertsec Xpress offers computer security software from Check Point as a fully customizable and pre-packaged data encryption software solution. The AES encryption algorithm and extensive 3rd party certifications offer you security that is used by millions. Try it for free today.

Why Use Data Encryption? (brighthub.com)
Identity Theft in Laptops (socyberty.com)

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Posted in AlertSec Xpress, Data Protection

Tags: Advanced Encryption Standard business Cryptography Encryption Federal Bureau of Investigation file encryption security United States

Potential Data Breach at Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office

July 9th, 2010

: CD – ROM

Recently over 1,39,000 letters were issued by the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office to investment advisers. Do you know the reason why?

Perhaps many of you have guessed it right. Another day, another victim this time the Secretary of State’s office became the latest data breach victim due to an accidental release of confidential information by an employee. Once again this incident raises question marks over the use of Computer Security Software. The result – Full exposure of critical and confidential information of over 1,39,000 investment advisers to a business publication.

The security unit of the office securities unit unknowingly mailed an electronic list of the investment advisors, along with their names, social security numbers, and other information.The personal information was present inside a CD-ROM and was sent to IA Week which is an investment industry publication. On the contrary, IA Week had issued an information request of the office’s Securities Division for a list of registered investment companies. On discovery of the error, the CD-ROM was sent back. It is believed that the data has not been copied by IA Week.

The experts at the Masachussets Security division are still not sure whether this incident qualifies as a data breach as no information loss has been reported and the CD-ROM was returned back.

Some of the security experts hold a similar view which is encouraging for the potential users whose information has been risked.

According to David Berman, director of product marketing for Voltage Security, “The users should treat this as if their personal information is now at risk”. “If gotten into the wrong hands, the exposed data could be used to obtain a fake ID, which can subsequently be used by hackers to infiltrate or open personal accounts using the victim’s personal information”.

Berman added, “In this basic case, any encryption at all would have prevented sensitive data being leaked outside the institution”. “In this case, it’s probably more than an unfortunate mistake. There are security best practices, operation processes and some technology requirements that this particular office doesn’t have.”

Brian McNiff, spokesman for Secretary of State William F. Galvin, said that there was no reason to believe any of the data was misused.

According to Massachusetts law the organizations who’re suspect of data breach incidents are required to notify the individuals affected, the state attorney general, and the director of consumer affairs whenever there is exposure of personal information.

At Alertsec, we would agree with the thoughts of Berman. A use of basic encryption software would have been enough to protect the sensitive data from being leaked outside. Perhaps, this incident will make government institutions in the United States better aware of the dangers of potential data breaches.

Data Security with Alertsec Xpress

If you use a data security software a theft would simply be reduced to an insurance matter and cost of the hardware plus time to rebuild the laptop. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or senstive 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.