losses

Study: Data breaches rose in 2008

Reports of data breaches in the United States increased 47 percent in 2008 from the year before, mostly as a result of lost or stolen equipment, and accidental exposure of data online, according to a new study from the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center.

There were 656 reports of breaches last year, compared with 446 for 2007, and an estimated 35.7 million records were potentially breached based on notification letters and information from breached companies, the study released this week found.

The breaches run the gamut, including: laptops stolen from Merrill Lynch and Starbucks; bank card information stolen from … Read more

Report: MP3 players threaten users' hearing

People who listen to MP3 players for only five hours a week at a high volume may be doing permanent damage to their hearing.

A team of nine experts on the European Union's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks is expected to release that finding in a study Monday, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.

The EU entity also points out that young people may be doing damage to their hearing that may not surface until years after the exposure, according to the newspaper.

"Regularly listening to personal music players at high-volume … Read more

Cisco study highlights data loss risks worldwide

In Germany it's apparently OK to have non-employees roam the offices, while in Brazil corporate secrets are commonly shared with family members, and even with total strangers. These are some of the results of a survey (PDF) commissioned by Cisco Systems and released Tuesday.

"It's interesting to see the cultural differences in terms of what's allowed and what's not allowed in different countries," said Marie Hattar, vice president of network and security solutions at Cisco. "If you look towards doing a data leakage prevention strategy, you've got to consider physical security as … Read more

HairMax LaserComb: Comb your hair up, hopefully

NOTE: You can read the follow up blog about the result of Dong's experiment here.

I just recently got my hands on a product that could potentially restore my thinning beauty as well as my confidence: a comb.

It's no ordinary comb. Calling it HairMax LaserComb, Lexington International, the developer of the product, claims it will restore your hair and prevent hair loss by applying low-level laser therapy--an effect similar to photosynthesis or photo-bio stimulation--to your scalp.

The therapy supposedly energizes and improves blood circulation while stimulating the growth of individual hair follicles, and, as a result, produces … Read more

Data on 84,000 U.K. prisoners is lost

Unencrypted data on all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales has gone missing after a Home Office contractor lost a USB stick on which it had been stored.

Contractor PA Consulting alerted the Home Office to the loss last Monday evening--and by midday Tuesday, the contractor confirmed "rigorous" searches had failed to uncover the whereabouts of the memory stick and its cachet of sensitive information.

According to a Home Office statement, the missing USB stick contains:

Data relating to all prisoners in England and Wales, including names, birth dates, and, in some cases, expected prison release data … Read more

Is Generation Y going deaf?

When I can hear a teenager's headphones through the din of a NYC subway car, I know he's on his way.

If I'm sitting a good 10 feet away from him and can still hear the screech of his headphones, I know the kid is killing his ears. Sure, I'm sometimes tempted to say something, but I never do. He's not really bothering anybody. And if he wants to be stone deaf by the time he's 30, well, it's his life.

But does he know that day by day he's doing irreparable … Read more

Nortel shares sink after lackluster earnings

Shares of Nortel Networks sank as much as 17 percent on Friday after the company reported a wider second-quarter loss and warned that it faces challenges ahead.

The Canadian telecommunications equipment company posted a quarterly loss of $113 million, or 23 cents a share. That compares with a loss of $37 million, or 7 cents, a year ago. The results included $67 million in restructuring charges.

The company also warned that it faces increasing challenges amid concerns about the economy and lower spending by certain North American CDMA customers. But it asserted that revenue is expected to grow in the … Read more

ERM: The forgotten data security space

With information technology, you can look at problems and solutions in lots of different ways. For end users and academics, this can lead to a lot of experimentation, skunk works projects, and trial-and-error. But that is not the case when it comes to technology vendors. Start-ups also see lots of ways to solve problems, but they are bound by business plans, directors, and funding to pick their battles and build focused solutions. Some make the right choice and get lucky, some don't.

As an example, I offer two different solution types for data security: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and … Read more

Data Loss Prevention needs a new name--and acronym

We are an industry of Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs). Everyone tries to categorize what they do with them.

Some like ERP stick around for years, while others like Enterprise Optical Networking (EON) come and go without much fanfare. On occasion, however, the industry creates a TLA to define an industry trend, but as the market and technology develop the TLA no longer fits.

This explanation aptly describes the situation with Data Loss Prevention (DLP). A few years ago, DLP vendors like Vericept and Vontu made hay by providing a network-based gateway appliance that would scan IP packets looking for confidential … Read more