Feb
16
Data Breach Alert: Multiple Organization Data Breaches
February 16, 2007 |Websense® Security LabsTM has received reports of three new data security breaches.
Department of Education, Des Moines, Iowa.
Personal information, including Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and dates of birth, leaked from an unprotected file located on the department’s website. The file contained nearly 160,000 records of individuals who obtained a General Educational Development certificate from Iowa between 1965 and 2002.
The protocol was HTTP, and the data was NPI (customer data).
City College of San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
Private information, including names, grades, and Social Security numbers of 11,000 past and possibly current students at City College of San Francisco, leaked from a file posted to the internet for several years. Due to an incorrect business process, students’ details were posted online, allowing a contractor to prepare transcripts.
The protocol was HTTP, and the data was NPI (customer data).
Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.
Personal information, including Social Security numbers of nearly 2,000 members of the Metropolitan Police Department, has been accidentally released to two Advisory Neighborhood Commission officials who requested information about police overtime.
The protocol was network printer, and the data was NPI (customer data).
Websense Content Protection Suite can prevent such leaks by blocking internal and external communications, such as emails and web posts, that include data that should be protected. Content Protection Suite also protects against leaks from outside the organization by using a reverse proxy mode. This mode prevents unauthorized access to web pages that contain this type of information.
By using the suite’s Content Auditor module for monitoring and discovering data at rest, and data in use, at the endpoint, an organization can identify and locate where confidential and private information is found, and determine if that data is being used inappropriately.
For additional information on how to discover your sensitive data, monitor its movement throughout your network, and protect it against breaches, visit:
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