Lists of email addresses with password and other information used to send phishing emails and spam were hosted on an open server and available to copy or download. More than one-fourth of the email and password combinations were identified from previous data breaches and this collection of 711 million email address account credentials shows the scale of data breaches
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Following a data breach involving over 500 million accounts and a delay in notifying the public or impacted parties, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) started an investigation into the Yahoo data breach at the request of a Senator. Later at a Senate Committee meeting the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cited the Yahoo breach reiterating
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IBM and the Ponemon Institute recently published the latest results of their global study measuring the financial impact of data breaches to the victim companies. While the global average increased to $4 million, up from $3.8 million last year, organizations in the United States, Germany and Canada incur $5 million or more in losses per
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While the number of data breaches that occurred in 2015 stayed nearly the same as from the year before, the number of personal records compromised in data breaches almost doubled to over 169 million, the highest total since 2009. Some of the largest breaches in 2015 were in the health care industry which often included
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After completing a $67 million settlement with Visa in August regarding the high profile data breach Target experienced in late 2013, the company this week announced acceptance of a $39.4 million dollar settlement with MasterCard and issuing banks. Home Depot, who suffered a notable data breach in 2014, also reached a settlement with MasterCard according
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Between February and May fraudsters used compromised consumer information to obtain more detailed tax payer data via the IRS’s “get transcripts” web service for consumers. The IRS estimates there were 200,000 unauthorized attempts or lookups to gain access to copies of previous year tax returns, more than half of which were successful, leading to as
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The late 2013 data breach impacting 70 million Target customers continues to cost the company which in their latest financial statements reported $4 million in related expenses for Q4 2014. The total loss to Target for 2013 and 2014 related to the data breach was $162 million, but would have been even larger if not
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This week the White House proposed the Personal Data Notification and Protection Act, which seeks to set a national standard for data breach notification requirements replacing the patchwork of separate laws across 47 states. If passed into law, this act would strengthen and more clearly define what is required of organizations that suffer data breaches,
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Credit bureau Experian recently released their second annual Data Breach Industry Forecast report highlighting six trends expected for 2015. Key predictions include more concentrated data breach activity earlier in 2015 prior to the U.S. EMV liability shift date and hackers expanding efforts targeting the millions of new internet connected devices. While there hasn’t yet been
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According to reports from the U.S. Secret Service and Kaspersky Labs, malware known as Backoff has been used to attack more than 1,000 businesses. This malware targets point-of-sale retail payment systems, intercepting and sending payment information to the fraudsters that employ it. The most recent high profile case of this malware and data compromise targeted
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