Sometimes it is the customers and sometimes it is the employees.  Only in rare cases is it both that get affected by data breaches that seem to keep happening at companies all across America.  The most recent breach took place in Greenville, South Carolina.  This community contains one of the major offices of Charter Communications who recently suffered a data breach that resulted in the theft of numerous laptop computers.  There has been no discussion about how the laptops disappeared or what type of security protection was on them.

One thing that is certain is that the information on the laptops contained personal information on over 9,000 Charter employees around the country.  These records were not only for current workers, but also those no longer employed by the company.  Unfortunately, there is no timeline for when the workers were with Charter, so at this point anyone who worked for the company might be at risk of identity theft.  The company was planning to send out a letter to affected employees, both former and current, although there has been no time table released for this information’s dissemination.  The laptop contained names, addresses, social security numbers, and some bank routing numbers from direct deposit accounts.

At this point, a spokesman for the company said that there is no indication that any of the private information has been used for fraudulent means.  However, experts suggest not taking any chances.  While Charter is providing up to a years worth of free credit monitoring services, some employees are reluctant to enroll in this service.  A former employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said that she did not trust the company to pay for the enrollment because that would involve giving them her personal information again, and Charter has already shown they are not capable of insuring the security of that type of data.

An option for disenchanted workers like this is subscribing themselves into an ID theft service program, such as the one offered by Lifelock.  For only a minimal monthly fee, the company works to provide potential victims of identity theft with some piece of mind.  By establishing contacts with the three major credit bureaus, Trans Union, Experian, and Equifax, Lifelock is ideally situated to stop identity theft before it starts.  One frequent effort by ID thieves is to open up new credit cards or take out loans using the social security number of a victim.  When this information goes to be processed through the credit bureaus, Lifelock temporarily halts it and contacts its customer.  If the customer verifies these applications as legitimate, then they are sent through to continue being reviewed by the bureaus.  However, if the customer says that it is fraudulent activity, Lifelock prevents the applications from going to the review process and consequently prevents identity theft from taking place.

Medical records keep getting compromised.  It does not seem to matter where people live, although the vast majority of breaches have been taking place in the northwestern part of the United States.  Even in remote Alaska, people are realizing that their identity is not secure.  The most recent incident took place at the Providence Alaska Medical Center where a laptop with information on over 250 patients has gone missing.  At this point, a spokeswoman for the center said that the laptop was not stolen, although it has not been seen since May 31.  She gave no indication of why she believes that the laptop was not stolen despite its long absence without anyone having seen it.

The laptop contained information on 250 oncology patients.  For most of these individuals, only medical data was lost, although this is still a violation of HIPAA laws and the federal government will investigate the incident to determine whether or not the medical center should suffer any penalty in federal funding.  However, despite the limited information on most patients, some files contained social security numbers, addresses, and dates of birth.  This is more than enough information for an identity thief to ruin the life of an individual.  At this point there is no word on how the laptop was secured, although if it had been password protected or encrypted, it is likely that the spokeswoman would have mentioned this so that peoples’ fears would have been lessened.

The patients information contained on the laptop had all visited the medical center between August 2005 and May 2007.  All the other files at the center are secure.  However, there will be a continuing investigation to see if more safety measures need to be added to the electronic network to prevent this type of thing from happening in the future.  At this time, there is no word as to whether or not outside consultants will be brought in to address this matter.

Letters have been sent out to the 250 affected people.  Within the letter the medical center said that it will provide a year’s worth of free credit monitoring.  One way that monitoring gets done is to enroll people into ID theft subscription services, such as Lifelock.  This company maintains connections with Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian to deal with credit card and loan applications that get filed.  Whenever this paperwork appears, Lifelock stops the process momentarily to contact its customer.  If the customer verifies that the paperwork is legitimate, it is allowed to go through, otherwise it is stopped from going through.  Since this is one of the most common ways that ID thieves use fraudulently gained information, Lifelock helps prevent ID theft before it starts.

Nothing makes the government blush like getting caught with its hand in the cookie jar.  What is even worse is when they set up an organization to deal with identity theft and the head of it soon becomes the victim of a data breach.  Welcome to Norway, where few are happy with the way the government has been addressing the growing spread of ID theft that has started to grip the world.  Yet, this is the exact situation that Georg Apenes finds himself in now.

In a daring hack, over 60,000 Norwegians have been impacted by this most recent breach.  It is the largest to hit the country in a number of years and the more staggering figure is that the 60,000 affected represents over 1.3% of the national population.  The hack did not place on the national level, but came through the communications company Tele2.  The thieves were able to access the network systems to procure the personal identity numbers of people and also their addresses.  With this information, they are able to order goods online for people, access credit card information, and change addresses so that they can get in the mail any of the illegal goods that they are ordering in other peoples’ names.

At this time, no one has reported severe results because of the breach.  It is being speculated at this point by officials within the government’s ID theft prevention agency that Georg Apenes received something just to bring to everyone’s attention how lacking the security was at certain important companies in the country.  Indeed, Tele2 has been cited numerous times that its security and network systems needed to be upgraded to prevent this time of incident.  A spokesman for the company said that they have been working to improve their security measures, but now ill bring in outside consultants from the continent to help them get up to speed quickly.  They also have vowed that nothing of this sort will happen to their company again.

In the United States, stories of this nature have more and more people worrying about their own security.  As a result, individuals are taking matters into their own hands, rather than relying on the companies they interact with to provide ever continuing upgrades to their security systems.  One way that people are able to do this is to subscribe to ID theft services.  One of the most popular of these companies is Lifelock.  They maintain contacts with all three major credit bureaus, Trans Union, Experian, and Equifax.  Whenever a new loan or credit card application comes into be processed, it is temporarily held up.  Lifelock then calls its customer to see if they actually submitted the forms or if someone is attempting a fraudulent activity.  If fraud is determined, then the application is stopped and identity theft is prevented before it starts.  This is always a positive because there are countless examples of people who have been victims of ID theft and spend years trying to correct the matter with little positive result.

Corporate responsibility.  That is what everyone on the business channels seems to trumpet right now.  And in some cases this is exactly the response that tarnished companies are taking. However, as a consumer it might be better if the companies took proactive approaches and stopped damage from taking place to their customers and company image.  For Dominion Enterprises and their InterActive Financial Marketing Group, this all comes as good ideas a little too late.  It was announced today that a data breach took place at the company on one of its secure servers between November 2007 and February 2008.  There has been no word released yet on why it took so long for the company to alert the public or when they first discovered that the breach had taken place.

Roughly 92,000 people have been affected by the hacking of the server.  While the number of individuals is troubling, what is more problematic is the information that was taken from the server.  This material included names, dates of birth, addresses, social security numbers, and credit card numbers.  In a world where personal data sells for $15-$20 in internet chat rooms, this is a gold mine for identity thieves.  There has been no word yet on how the hackers were able to infiltrate the security measures that were supposed to be in place on the server.  In response to the breach, Dominion has brought in industry leading security experts to review all the company’s network policies and to provide a complete overhaul to the system so that the financial transactions of the company are not at risk in the future.

In letters that are being sent out to all affected people, the company is apologizing profusely.  It is also providing a year’s worth of free credit monitoring.  This type of monitoring comes from companies like Lifelock.  This company maintains contacts with all three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian.  Whenever a new application for a credit card or loan is submitted, Lifelock holds the application from being processed until it can check with its client about the validity of the claim.  If the name of the person on the paperwork did not file it, then it is clearly a case of identity theft and it is prevented from being processed.  With this whole procedure ID thieves are thwarted before they can ruin the lives of innocent people.

Dominion has stated that it has already contacted local and federal law enforcement officials.  They plan to conduct a thorough investigation of the breach to see whether or not the hackers had any inside help that would have allowed them to get through the security features which had been in place.  No more details about the investigation were available since the case is ongoing.  Dominion wants to assure the public that it is safe to invest with the InterActive Financial Marketing Group in the future because a breach of this nature will never happen again.  Time will tell how this plea to the public works out.

People in the world look at Google and see a behemoth. They see a company that has surpassed Microsoft in terms of power and influence. And they might very well be right. However, Google isn’t going to take over the United States and eventually the world. In fact, it takes hits just like every other company out there. In this case, it failed to secure some of the personal details of its employees and it the most recent company to note that it has suffered a data breach.

In this case, Google is really a victim as much as are the people whose information was stolen. Google uses Colt Express Outsourcing Services to take care of certain human resource functions. Therefore, when the office of Colt was broken into, it was Google information and that of other companies that was stolen. What is even worse about the May 26 break-in was that Colt does not encrypt its data, so whoever perpetrator the crime has nothing standing in between them and the personal information of Google employees. This information contains social security numbers, names, and addresses. This breach also affected CNET Networks.

As more details about this breach have come forward, it is clear that the stolen information does not contain any credit card numbers. However, a name, address, and social security number of an individual is more than enough for a criminal to open up a fake credit card account, although the charges end up being far too real for those affected by the crime. People, not only those impacted by the Colt burglary, have been turning toward subscriptions with ID theft services, such as Lifelock. Lifelock contacts all three credit bureaus, Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian and monitors credit reports for activity that includes credit card and loan applications. Whenever one of these is filed, Lifelock contacts its customer to make sure that the application is legitimate.

In the case of this specific breach at Colt, Google has said that it will pay for a year’s subscription with an identity theft service, both for its employees and the employees at CNET. Colt is not able to provide this same guarantee because it is going through financial difficulties. Those affected by this breach are those Google employees hired before December 31, 2005. Google only recently realized that its employees were at risk and has sent out letters alerting people of the danger to their private data. Google has also announced that it no longer has any association with Colt and that the company does not currently handle human resource material for the internet giant. Google has said that its separation from Colt took place long before the burglary was reported.

Despite its beautiful campus and ivy covered buildings, Stanford is not immune to the problems of educational institutions in the 21st century. It was reported yesterday that the university recently was the victim of a series of thefts, one of which involved a laptop computer. Although the break-in occurred a few weeks ago, it was only noted today that the laptop contained personal data which could allow someone to perpetrate identity theft among any of the individuals listed in the database. Unfortunately, this breach not only hits a well respected institution in the United States, but it also has the potential to affect upwards of 60,000 people.

While this 60,000 people does not actually included any students, the university has not addressed whether or not research assistance or any student who has served as an aid to a professor happens to fall under this category. As it stands at the moment, the 60,000 is all former or current employees, across all departments and divisions, and without any end date for the window of information contained on the laptop. The laptop contained “confidential personal material” although there is no indication if this includes social security numbers, addresses, bank routing numbers, or anything along those lines.

While more details are continuing in the investigation, Stanford has assured its faculty and staff that it takes serious all of its required security measures. Although there is no word yet on how the data on the laptop is protected, a press released by the university to the media said that it is secure and that it will be difficult for anyone to access. Also in the release is the recognition that the individual or individuals who are responsible for the crime might not even know the material is on the laptop and that everyone should keep an eye on their credit report all the same.

Vice President for Business Affairs and Chief Financial Officer Randy Livingston wrote a letter that was sent out to all the affected parties. In the letter he laid out that Stanford has many rules in place that are supposed to prevent private data from being stored on computer systems that are mobile. He said that in light of this most recent incident, these efforts will be strengthened to prevent any future problems from taking place.

Unlike Harvard, which experienced its own data breach earlier in the year (link), Stanford has not spelled out whether or not it will set up any sort of subscription services for the potentially 60,000 affected people. These subscription services involved ID theft companies, such as Lifelock, that monitor the three major credit bureaus. Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian are all notified and Lifelock contacts its customers whenever a new credit card or loan application is filed. By contacting the consumer at this early phase, it significantly limits the likelihood that any identity theft will take place under the affected person’s account. While the letter to the affected employees does not contain any reference to these services, experts in the field of identity theft solutions recognize their benefit, whereas stopping the problem before it starts is much easier than the hassle of having to go through and deal with a large number of fraudulent charges.

Watch out students. No where seems to be safe on campus anymore. Not even the private offices of workers who handle the confidential data of many students. No wonder there is always such a flurry of signs reminding students at the end of the semester that they need to be mindful of their belongings, since people are stealing everything that isn’t bolted down to profit from at book sell back time. Even those things that are bolted down can walk away as was the case earlier in the month when a desktop computer was taken from an administrative office. There has been no word yet on which specific office was robbed or the exact material contained on the hard drive.

What is clear at this point is that over 6,200 students have been notified of the breach, although this was only made clear to the media through the outreach of the father of a student who was affected. It isn’t understood why the university did not approach the media and own up to its responsibility that its systems had been breached. Some have speculated that the East Tennessee State University is fearful that it will be found in violation of some of its safety and security policies. No word yet on how the university has responded to these accusations.

The breach not only affects current students, but also alumni. Unfortunately there hasn’t been any discussion about how far into the past the data goes, so there is no window of time that we can report to the public to let them know whether or not they should be concerned. The best thing to do is to keep an eye out for a letter from the university that deals with this case. Those seeking more information can contact the university’s Department of Safety.

The information contained on the desktop was encrypted and it met the standards that educational institutions are expected to have. At the same time, university officials have noted that there is a slight chance that the data could still be accessed, although there have been no reports of this happening. As the investigation continues, the university says that it will keep everyone posted and that it will assess its security settings to determine whether or not they need to be upgraded.

In the meantime, those affected are advised to contact one of the credit bureaus to place a fraud alert on their accounts. There are some ID theft subscription services, one being Lifelock, that provides continuous monitoring services. They contact all three credit bureaus, Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian and monitor for new loan and credit card applications. Whenever one of these applications appears, Lifelock contacts its customer to make sure that the application is legitimate and not some effort at identity theft.

In a recent press release by 1st Source Banks, based in South Bend, Indiana, the public has learned of a breach that took place within the debit systems of the bank. It appears that an unknown number of debit card numbers and pin codes were illegally hacked from a secure network at the bank’s corporate headquarters. There have been no reports at this point of any illegal activity to have resulted from this breach. The bank isn’t taking any chances though said James Seitz, a senior vice president for the firm.

In an effort to prevent any wrong doings from taking place, the bank has canceled all of the older ATM accounts of affected individuals and has sent out new account numbers and pin codes for people to use to establish their new account. While there have been no details about the number of people affected, the bank has said that these preemptive measures are costing them a considerable amount of money, although they appreciate how understanding all of their customers have been, especially while recognizing how serious of a problem identity theft has become in recent years.

While the bank continues to keep customers informed of changes taking place in the case, it was also decided that each affected individual will receive a one year subscription to an ID theft service. These companies, such as Lifelock, provide a safeguard against illegal credit activities that are reported through the major credit bureaus. Experian, Equifax, and Tran Union are contacted an alerts are placed on people’s accounts to keep an eye out for any new credit card or loan applications. These applications are then confirmed with the customer to make sure that they are legitimate.

The breach took place on May 12 and was identified that same day. Unfortunately, the people affected were not sent letters until the 28, over two weeks after the event took place. This is the result of the extensive investigation that the bank launched to uncover the extent of the damage and what the breach exposed. On May 12 when the breach was discovered, the server was set down and no other access was allowed to the system. This is what analysts believe has prevented any of the information from being illegally used. In an effort to prevent further incidences from happening, 1st Source hired an external consulting firm to review the safety features of the network. Seitz has noted that this group has contributed positive suggestions that have helped the bank update it encryption standards.

In an effort to answer all the questions of its customers, the bank has extended its customer service hours and has received favorable comments about the efforts taken by the bank. Additionally, the bank is monitoring ATM transactions on a minute by minute basis in order to detect any fraudulent activities that might occur.

School children need to perk up their ears and listen to their teachers. Some school boards need to follow a similar path. Yet again, a data breach has struck the educators of America. This time around, the guilty party resides somewhere in Dickson, Tennessee. Unfortunately, while the crime took place there, the ease of spreading personal information on the internet means that private material may already be spread around the globe.

Laptop computers do not just grow legs and walk away. With that said, theft is the only way to account for the disappearance of a Dickson County school official’s personal computer. In fact, the laptop was taken from the office of Johnny Chandler, the superintendent of the district. It contained the personal data of all employees of the school district between 2006 and 2007. In total, this breach puts around 850 people at risk. The material on the laptop contained addresses, license numbers, maiden names, and social security numbers. It also has tax information in addition to yearly wage data.

While police are still investigating the threat, there are some details of the case that are clear. Chandler just recently became superintendent of the district. The laptop was last accounted for on Friday. Authorities cannot find any signs of forced entry and are investigating the possibility that this was an inside job. Over the weekend, numerous people were in the building, including a cleaning crew, school staff members, and some students who were attending a retirement party. There is no motive to the crime at this point.

Chandler advises that everyone who was employed by the district keep an eye on their personal information. While a letter went out to inform people of the problem, some are not confident that their personal finances will remain unharmed. Some of these people are investing in an ID theft services. Subscriptions to such companies, such as Lifelock, allow members to have a peace of mind, knowing that their credit reports are being constantly monitored at all three bureaus. Unlike other companies, Lifelock recognized the importance of keeping an eye on credit at Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian, since some companies do not report to all three.

Chandler has vowed that a similar problem will never take place. New security procedures are being instituted for the district, including the policy that no personal information can be stored on laptops. Additionally, new security measures are in place at the district’s office, although specifics could not be obtained. The superintendent assured the media that the stolen laptop is covered by multiple encryption and security features. While there is optimism that the security will prevent any illegal access on the computer, people are advised to be vigilant. From now on, at the school district all laptops are to be locked up in a secure vault when they are not in use.