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200 patients contacted after Nurse has bag stolen

A potential data breach may have taken place after a nurse had her handbag stolen when her car was broken into.

The car was an out-of-hour’s vehicle that a Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust nurse was using on the 9th of July and was parked outside a patient’s house in East Chesterton when the theft took place. Documents containing details of some 200 patients where inside the bag and may now be at risk of being leaked.
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Lawsuit filed against Banner Health after massive data breach

Although we deal with data leaks primarily over here in the UK, we report on the common ones in the U.S. as well as it serves to show just how serious and how often breaches, leaks, and hacks are happening.

It is an everyday problem.

In America, a lawsuit has been filed against healthcare system, Banner Health. The lawsuit against Banner Health is a class-action lawsuit that has been filed by a Glendale doctor, Dr. Howard Chen. The class-action is being brought because of a cyber-attack on Banner Health that resulted in 3.7 million patients, employees, cafeteria customers, and other people’s information being compromised.
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ID cards for health insurance company discloses data breach

Newkirk Products Inc, a company in America which provides ID cards for health insurance plans, has revealed that a data breach took place that allowed unauthorised access to a server that contained a wealth of member information.

The server that was hacked contained data which included names, addresses, and dates of birth for members. Banking or credit card details, medical information, and social security numbers, were reportedly not on the server, the company has said.

It is estimated about 3.3 million members of the insurance plan have been affected by the data breach, but there is no evidence that the data has been used inappropriately. As of yet…
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Ukrainian hacker reportedly steals wealth of medical documents

A cyber criminal from the Ukraine admitted on twitter to stealing 105,000 documents from the Central Ohio Urology Group. The documents included patient names, diagnosis information, addresses, and dates of birth. The Urology group is meant to be the second biggest health system in the state with 24 locations.

A screenshot was posted on twitter by the alleged cyber criminal listing stolen information with claims that some 156GB of data had been uploaded to a Google Drive.

No comment has been made by the Central Ohio Urology Group, but one thing is for sure: this is a serious breach.
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Possible Yahoo data breach being investigated

Yahoo are currently investigating the potential data leak by the hacker who was linked to the “mega-breaches” of MySpace and LinkedIn; a topic we recently covered.

The hacker has allegedly posted the details of 200 million Yahoo accounts onto the ‘dark web’ and is selling them for three bitcoins (£1,360).

The hacker is using the same name – ‘Peace’ – that was used from the 2012 data leaks, which makes the hacker “most likely” to be the same person. Yahoo is currently “working to determine the facts” and are taking the claim “very seriously”.
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ATM Chip and Pin hack revealed at Black Hat conference

While chip and pin is widely used in Europe, the US has only just started to use the technology.

Concerns across the pond are that this makes them a new target for hackers, according to researchers at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

They demonstrated how hackers were able to use mostly unmodified ATM machines to dispense hundreds of dollars -similar to how hackers would possibly use the machines.
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Wolverhampton Council suffers huge data leak

Wolverhampton council are reportedly at the centre of a huge data leak when almost 10,000 peoples private information was mistakenly emailed to the wrong person.

In November 2015, Wolverhampton council sought a report from its payroll department. Due to an error, 9,858 people’s personal data was sent to an external third party by accident.

Those affected by the mistake included 73 education establishments, although it is not clear if the data released was about Wolverhampton city’s schools and teachers. The data leaked was on a spreadsheet containing personal information, and it has not been said if those who have had their privacy rights breached have been informed.
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Cyber Crime affects 1 in 10 UK Adults, reports say

The annual Crime Survey for England and Wales has been published by the Office of National Statistics. Worryingly, the figures show that 5.8 million incidents that are classed as cyber crime impact 1 in 10 adults.

The internet offers us a lot of convenience and most people fully embrace it. It is the level of trust that we have in the online world that can open us up to cyber crime though. Crime is changing, and as more and more of our personal details end up online, criminals are taking full advantage of any possible vulnerabilities.

This can lead to fraud, hacking, and other cyber crimes – problems which are on the rise.
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Information Commissioner Office (ICO) recent reports in to public sector data breaches

The Information Commissioner Office is the UK’s independent body that upholds information rights (https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/who-we-are/). They cover different legislation and handle tens of thousands of enquires, complaints, and concerns that are made each year. They take action and investigate how organisations handle data.

Where bodies fail to meet requirements of legislation, the ICO can do different things which include; prosecute those who commit criminal offences under the Act; report to Parliament on issues of concerns; or conduct investigations to assess and check if organisations are complying with the Act.

As Data Leak Lawyers we can occasionally work with them, but our role is to help properly compensate victims of data leaks, breaches, and hacks. A lot of the work they cover is relevant for what we do though.
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Industry Reaction to O2 Data Hack

O2 customer data was found for sale on the dark web from a hack that reportedly took place several years ago. The data was supposedly obtained from gaming website XSplit.

Log-in details were stolen from XSplit, and were then matched with a number of O2 accounts, allowing the hackers access to customer’s personal information. This is known as credential stuffing.

As so many people are online and reuse the same usernames and passwords, even though we are told not to, this hack has made people vulnerable to further problems. The hacker’s accessed customer’s personal information such as phone numbers, emails, and their date of birth. You can read more on this story here.

Today, we’ll be looking at the industry’s reaction to the hack.
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