government data breaches 2020

The UK’s ICO, for example, has been willing to fine public sector bodies, such as the University of Greenwich, which was one of the largest fines pre-GDPR. Last year, we also began to see the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) impose hefty fines and penalties on organizations, such as those relating to the Equifax breach and Facebook data leaks, to settle charges of improper handling of Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Chief among these are those who are backed by nation states. Government data breaches have the potential to disrupt municipal services. A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information to an untrusted environment. Other terms for this phenomenon include unintentional information disclosure, data leak, information leakage and also data spill. Across all sectors, external actors account for a growing percentage of breaches, making up 75% in 2019, against 62% in 2018. August 20, 2020: Researchers at Comparitech uncovered an unsecured database with 235 million Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube user profiles exposed online belonging to the defunct social media data broker, Deep Social. Experts say the way the hackers gained entry to their victims is particularly concerning for national security. Contractors and outsourcers working with the public sector are also a risk. Found insideThis report sets out the results of a study of consumer attitudes toward data breaches, notifications of those breaches, and company responses to such events. March 11, 2020: Whisper, an anonymous secret-sharing app, has left member information exposed in an unsecured database. September 5, 2020:  Over 1 million inmates that have used the prison phone service, Telmate, have had their personal information exposed in an unsecured database. As well as state secrets, government departments hold vast troves of data on taxpayers and citizens – from demographic details to criminal records. April 20, 2020: The personal and medical information of over 112,000 employees and patients of Beaumont Health was accessed by a malicious actor after compromising employee email accounts through a phishing attack. And public sector CISOs should take little comfort from any reduction in the scale of government data breaches. (OAIC) publishes periodic statistical information about notifications received under the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme to assist entities and the public to understand the operation of the scheme. This report provides detailed analysis of several malicious artifacts associated with a sophisticated supply chain compromise of SolarWinds Orion network management software, identified by the security company FireEye as SUNBURST.After being delivered as part of certain SolarWinds updates, a trojanized version of the “solarwinds.orion.core.businesslayer.dll” containing SUNBURST malware is installed by a legitimate SolarWinds installer application. Cyber criminals may also pressure victims to pay the ransom … The data breach exposed patient names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, admission and discharge dates, locations of services, and physician names and specialties. A malicious cyber criminal holds the data hostage until the ransom is paid. October 20, 2020:  The pharmaceutical corporation, Pfizer, exposed the personal and medical information of hundreds of medical patients taking cancer drugs through a data leak. Breaches appear in descending order, with the most recent appearing at the bottom of the page. The leaked information included names, phone numbers, dates of birth, email and home addresses, and GPS coordinates, as well as other technical information. Malicious or criminal attacks remain the leading source of data breaches, accounting for 289 notifications (65% of the total), down 5% in number from 304. Misconfigured cloud storage buckets can result in government data breaches. A data breach notification filed by Spotify claims the data exposed “may have included email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth only to certain business partners of Spotify.”. September 21, 2020:  Over 500,000 gamer accounts of Activision, the video game publisher, were targeted in a credential stuffing attack. A medical data breach is a data breach of health information, and could include either the personal health information of any individual's electronic health record or medical billing information from their health insurance. In the United States the rate of breaches has increased over time,... The scraped profile information in the data leak includes names, ages, genders, profile photos, account descriptions, statistics about follower engagement and demographic such as number of likes, followers, follower growth rate, engagement rate, audience demographic (gender, age and location), and whether the profile belongs to a business or has advertisements. You can’t get a new body or DNA, or biometrics.”. 64. This book offers perspective and context for key decision points in structuring a CSOC, such as what capabilities to offer, how to architect large-scale data collection and analysis, and how to prepare the CSOC team for agile, threat-based ... Town Sports has 185 clubs under various brands, including New York Sports Clubs, Philadelphia Sports Clubs, Boston Sports Clubs, Washington Sports Clubs. September 7, 2020:  A phishing attack led to the protected health information of 140,000 medical patients of Imperium Health Management to be exposed. “Information sharing was problematic for many years as the public sector always seemed more keen to listen than to share; perhaps this has improved,” says Mark King. Here’s a list of some of the latest and most serious government data breaches in 2019 and 2020: The scope of government data breaches is wide and varied. Between January and September 2019 there were over 7.9 billion data records exposed — a 33% increase from the same time in 2018! It will cause ongoing and significant damage over an extended period of time - perhaps years. The attack exposed patient names, addresses, dental diagnosis and treatment information, patient account numbers, billing information, bank account numbers, the name of the patient’s dentist, and health insurance information. March 24, 2020: The technology conglomerate, General Electric (GE), disclosed that a third party vendor experienced a data breach, exposing the personally identifiable information of over 280,000 current and former employees. The number of impacted business accounts has not been disclosed but its business users’ email addresses, phone numbers, and the last four digits of their credit card number were impacted. The unsecured database also disclosed sensitive credit card details from over 100,000 guests, including card number, cardholder’s name, CVV, and expiration date, and total cost of hotel reservations. Although the app does not collect names, the database included nicknames, ages, ethnicities, genders, and location data of over 900 million users. But even sophisticated and well-run public sector bodies are under threat, because of the value of their data. Although the passwords were hashed, cybercriminals are unhashing them and selling the data again. The personal information of T-Mobile customers accessed includes names and addresses, Social Security numbers, financial account information, and government identification numbers, as well as phone numbers, billing and account information, and rate plans and features. In other words, they mainly target easy victims where rapid ransom money can be easily extorted with commonly known cyber-attack methods that tight security would prevent. The information involved included customers’ names and login credentials (email address and password.) “Healthcare data relates to ID in more ways than you realise. The 2020 United States federal government data breach was the result of a cyberattack by a group backed by a foreign government. Data that is in the public domain is also contradictory. Found inside – Page 1537th International Conference, HCIBGO 2020, Held as Part of the 22nd HCI ... the exposure of personal data arising from repeated stories of data breaches ... Found inside – Page 115According to the UK government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2018, barely half of ... 95 96 Data Protection Commission, “Annual Report”, February 2020. Microsoft says the database did not include any other personal information. “Defence, intelligence and higher levels of government that handle top secret and classified information will have much more sophisticated defences in place, making them a much more difficult target.”, Government data breaches can be particularly devastating as they hold a wealth of sensitive information. The report notes that the federal government has had 443 data breaches … October 6, 2020: Blackbaud, a cloud-based fundraising database management vendor for non-profits and educational institutions, became victim to a ransomware attack beginning in February 2020, which remained undetected until May 2020. “Most CISOs feel it provides the right level of focus and attention, and it is then number one reason they justify their budgets.”. July 28, 2020: The video creation platform, Promo.com, confirmed their 22 million customers have had their personal and account information exposed in a third-party data breach. Contact our cyber security customer service desk and technical support agents here: Contact Us or call toll free at 866-973-2677. There is a point of diminishing returns on preventative investments. In fact, most experts believe that 2021 will continue the data breach trends begun in 2020 — and even the longer-term breach trends going back to 2005. August 26, 2020: A motion rehabilitation device manufacturer, Dynasplint Systems, experienced an encryption attack on its business devices that exposed the personal and medical information of 103,000 patients. The City of Port Phillip Council has accidentally published to data.gov.au personal information of an unknown number of residents who had reported graffiti, according to an article from ITNews supported by a statement released by the council.. Verizon’s latest Data Breach Investigations Report found that 16% of breaches were in the public sector, excluding healthcare. Updated July, 15 2020: Researchers found 142 million personal records from former guests at the MGM Resorts hotels for sale on the Dark Web, hinting that the original breach was larger than previously announced. The company has reset passwords to prevent further access. The database exposed customer names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, check-in data, gym location, notes on customer accounts, last four digits of credit card, credit card expiration date, and billing history. The data dump exposed includes names, home addresses, phone numbers, emails, and dates of birth of former hotel guests. 63. Government of Quebec, Canada (February 2020) – The government of Quebec admitted to a data breach potentially impacting around 360,000 teachers employed in the Canadian province. The takeaway is that law firms shouldn’t invest solely in data breach prevention. Email addresses, passwords, personal meeting URLs, and host keys are said to be collected through a credential stuffing attack. January 23, 2020: THSuite, a point-of-sale system of marijuana dispensaries across the U.S., disclosed personal information belonging to over 85,000 medical marijuana patients and recreational users after leaving their database unprotected. America’s Hopelessly Anemic Response to One of the Largest Personal-Data Breaches Ever. If personal data falls into criminal hands, the impact can affect individuals for a long time, especially if biometric data are lost. September 24, 2020:  A researcher at Comparitech discovered an unsecured online database containing records of 600,000 gym members of the fitness chain, Town Sports International. Ransomware is a type of malicious software, or malware, that encrypts data on a computer making it unusable. The most common by far are phishing attacks (for 83% and 79% respectively), followed by impersonation (for 27% and 23%). “They have moved on to other sources of information that complement the data they have stolen.” Touhill cites the indictment against four officers in China’s People’s Liberation Army, over the 2017 Equifax hack, as evidence of a new type of threat. 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