January 31, 2006
He’s battled evil countless times, playing every role from intergalactic swahbuckler to President of the United States, but in his latest project veteran actor Harrison Ford is - you guessed it - a victim of identity theft.
Not just any identity theft, mind you. The plot of Waner Bros latest release, ‘Firewall’, sees Ford’s character’s identity used in a high-tech bank robbery - and of course, a battle of wits ensues. Although previously seen as highly un-sexy, it seems Hollywood has decided there’s a buck or two to be made by playing on current consumer fears over ID theft.
Oh, and of course, the bad guy has a British accent…
January 30, 2006
Since February 2005, over 52 million Americans’ identities have been exposed in a variety of security breaches. Of 113 incidents reported by Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 55 occurred in colleges, universities and university-affiliated medical centers.
Affected institutions include the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Washington Medical Center.
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse director Beth Givens said universities are vulnerable to these problems because they possess lots of data but often have it spread throughout various locations on campus, making it difficult to control who has access to the data.
January 28, 2006
According to research announced in the UK by analyst firm, Quocirca, 60% of firms are failing to enforce whatever mobile security policies they have in place.
However, over 80% of IT security professionals questionned said that normal workers represented the biggest security risk to their organization. The survey points to a worrying trend that many organizations appear content to leave the issue of endpoint and mobile security to the end users - rather than creating and enforcing a centralized policy.
January 27, 2006
Financial services company Ameriprise Financial Inc. has begun notifying some 158,000 customers and 68,000 financial advisers that a laptop containing personal information about them — including names, account numbers or Social Security numbers — was stolen late last month.
January 26, 2006
JANUARY 26, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has imposed a $10 million civil penalty against data aggregator ChoicePoint Inc. for a massive data security breach that resulted in the compromise of nearly 140,000 consumer records last year.
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