A recent report analyzes the $211 Million in data breach fines imposed on European Union organizations by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Read More

Number of Disclosed Data Breaches Down 50% but Exposed Records Up 400% in First Half of 2020
While there are some questions around the number of data breaches thus far, 2020 is shaping up to be a record year in terms of number of records compromised at least. According to a study on data breaches and compromised data during the first six months of the year, there have been just over 2,000
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More than 1-in-10 Ransomware Attacks Involve Threat of Releasing Consumer or Client Data
Turning ransomware attacks into data breaches if the ransom isn’t paid, what’s being called exfiltration+encryption attacks, can be damaging on multiple levels. In the first half of this year 11 percent of ransomware attacks have adopted this tactic. ID Ransomware, a website and free tool that allows ransomware victims to upload a ransom note or
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State Unemployment Systems Battered With Breaches and Identity Fraud
The state of Arkansas shut down their unemployment application website which exposed the PII of nearly 30,000 applicants and Illinois faced a similar issue. Meanwhile, the U.S. Secret Service reports that hundreds of mules are being used to funnel unemployment benefits to an organized fraud ring in Nigeria falsely filing for benefits with stolen identity
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How to Secure Your Video Chats and Meetings to Protect Against “Zoombombing”
Keeping unwanted parties out of business meetings can range from important to imperative depending on the topics and focus of the video call. There has been a sudden increase in employees working from home and requiring the use of Zoom or other services. While many media reports have discussed the threat of “Zoombombing,” there are
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Government Agencies in Puerto Rico Fall Prey to Pair of Spear Phishing Attacks Sending Over $4 Million to Fraudsters
After compromising the email account of a government official at one agency, targeted phishing attacks were sent from this trusted contact to other government agencies purporting that bank accounts for receiving their payments had changed. Puerto Rico’s Industrial Development Company sent over $2.6 million while the Tourism Company paid $1.5 million to fraudster-controlled accounts held
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Massive Wawa Data Breach Puts Unknown Number of Cards in Hands of Fraudsters
Wawa announced a large-scale malware compromise breaching payment cards processed at the pump or inside between March 4 and December 12, 2019, also admitting that the company “does not have sufficient information to determine” how many payment cards were exposed. The gas station and convenience store has more than 850 locations along the east coast
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Nearly Four Thousand Data Breaches, Four Billion Records Compromised in First Half of 2019
More than 3,800 data breaches occurred in the first half of this year, a 54 percent increase from the first half of 2018. The number of consumer records compromised in data breaches increased 52 percent over this time, with 4.1 billion records compromised in the first half of 2019 and 3.2 billion of those coming
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Nearly 450 Million Consumer Records with PII Exposed in 2018
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, who just released their 2018 End-of-Year Data Breach Report, the number of data breaches fell by nearly 25 percent compared to 2017, but the number of compromised records containing personally identifiable information (PII) more than doubled to 446.5 million. Although the total number of data breaches declined in
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Germany Issues First GDPR Fine Following Data Breach at Social Media Company
Nearly 2 million username and password combinations along with 330,000 email and password combinations were exposed in a data breach impacting German social media platform Knuddels.de. The company received a €20,000 fine related to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) because the passwords exposed were stored in plain text. Read More