Recent OM Data Breach Analysis

Privacy is, and should continue to be, a fundamental dimension of living in a free, democratic society. Laws protect “government, credit, communications, education, bank, cable, video, motor vehicle, health, telecommunications, children’s and financial information; generally carve out exceptions for disclosure of personal information; and authorize the use of warrants, subpoenas, and court orders to obtain the information.” (Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Program Assessment, 2008) This is where a lot of people feel as though they have their privacy violated. Most Americans are law-abiding citizens who do not commit illegal acts against the country, they want to go about their lives, minding their own business and not having to worry about outside interference. The fine line between privacy and National Security may not be so fine in everyone’s mind. While it is the job of government agencies to ensure the overall safety of the country and those living in it, the citizens that obey the law and do not do anything illegal often wonder why they are subject to any kind of search, when they can clearly point out, through documentation, that they have never done anything wrong.

California’s SB 1386 takes the FTC’s efforts one step further by requiring companies to notify California residents when a security lapse has resulted in disclosure of personal information so that immediate action may be taken to mitigate damages. In 2002, the California state employee payroll database was breached. Confidential information about 265,000 employees was available to hackers including names, addresses, bank account numbers, and social security numbers. The data center didn’t notify anyone for several weeks, leaving the employees vulnerable to identity theft longer than necessary. In response, SB 1386 was enacted as a means to ensure that Californians receive prompt notification so they may take immediate steps to protect their personal information.

robust privacy protections already in place at DHS without risking exposure of personal data by: Enhancing DHS’s already robust Privacy Office to ensure the NCCIC complies with all civilian laws that protect Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. Requiring private companies to ‘scrub’ and remove personal information

Issa utilizes statistics to suggest ideas. He says, “The Office of Personnel Management’s security breach resulted in the theft of 22 million Americans’ information, including fingerprints, Social

On December 18, 2013, one of the security bloggers, Brian Krebs, posted in his blog that Target, one of the biggest US retailers, had suffered a massive data breach. The next day, Target announced that data from more than 40 million credit and debit card accounts had been stolen from its systems, and noting that they started a thorough investigation. Perhaps learning from Target’s mistakes, other organizations could achieve a goal of better protecting themselves and their customers’ information.

On September 8, 2015, it was discovered that a Patriot Financial Services (PFS) employee, whom provided customer support services to clients, had stolen personal financial data from approximately 50K of their customers. The data stolen by this employee was comprised of personal customer information including full names, home addresses, social security numbers, contact numbers, bank account numbers, driver 's license numbers, birth dates, email addresses, mother 's maiden names, pin’s and account balances. The suspect employee then proceeded to leak out this

In the Data breach Investigation report of 2012, the compromised records 174 million security incidents from all over the world were analyzed also the investigation confirmed 855 data breaches. The attacks were carried out from 19 different nations and affected all kinds of organizations small and large.

In the midst of the holiday season, Target shoppers were shocked in December 2013 when the news came out, 40 million Target credit cards had been stolen (Krebs, 2013f) by accessing data on point of sale (POS) systems (Krebs, 2014b). Target later revised that number to include private data for 70 million customers (Target, 2014). The breach transpired between November 27 and December 15th 2014 (Clark, 2014). Over 11 GB of data was stolen (Poulin, 2014). Target missed internal alerts and found out about the breach when they were contacted by the Department of Justice (Riley, Elgin, Lawrence & Matlack, 2014).

“Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity”(Jeffrey Rosen). Where were you on September 11, 2001? Do you remember the world before this tragic incident? Throughout history, the United States has adopted forms of legislation with the intention of improving national security. From prohibition, to gun laws, the outcomes of these legislations have not always been good.

We all value our privacy, and we all know that privacy can conflict with other important social values. However, in this increasingly digital and technological world, we are more susceptible than ever to government intrusion of our digital communications and data. This came to light in June 2013, when former National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden revealed thousands of classified documents detailing the intrusive mass surveillance and bulk data collection of the NSA to journalists and subsequently the American public. As a result, widespread distrust and questioning of the American government’s data-collection programs grew among American citizens and bipartisan leaders who were also subject to the surveillance apparatus of the

In September of 2014, Home Depot suffered what was at that time considered the second largest data breach in history. Section 2 provides background and details of the attack and identifies the methodology used and specific type of attack. Section 3 identifies the threat actors, the information that was taken, and how the information could be used. Section 4 identifies the specific vulnerabilities that were exploited and how attackers can be discouraged in the future. Finally, Section 5 identifies specific ways to reduce the effects and minimize the loss from a data breach.

Target to the Office of Personnel Management—the private sector and government equally feel the after-effects of data breaches. Data breaches can result in lawsuits from the affected victims. Lawsuits continue to harm a company’s finances and reputation long after the data breach occurs.

“Imagine waking up one morning and losing everything you have, your property, your dignity, your family, and, most importantly, your freedom. (Mr. Payne, Congressional Record, V. 147, Pt. 8, June 12, 2001 to June 25 2001)” In just a blink of an eye, a part of freedom could vanquish, and nothing would ever be the same. Everyone’s life would become an open book; a place where anyone could seize other’s private information. Worst of all, there would not be anything anyone could do to make it stop. The government may claim that this inevitably helps society and keeps American citizens safe by solving crimes faster, which is a favorable thing, but even so, many wonder how Americans are safe if their information is easily obtained by others. Although

In 1997, President William J. Clinton, as cited by Woodward (2003), states that having right to privacy is one of the most cherished freedoms by individuals. However, most of the consumers today just cares about the convenience brought by technology. Many consumers do not like passwords and PINs because it might be forgotten due to its complexity or it might took a lot of time to be authenticated. Fingerprint authentication was implemented to address these problems. Vacca (2007) remarks that consumers will use fingerprint authentication because of its convenience (p. 121). Although finger-scan technology provides the convenience, which consumers always wanted, without sacrificing security, this technology infringes their privacy at the same time. Individuals lose their anonymity when they disclose their biometric information. Woodward (1997) states that the individual is disclosing an

In order for biometrics to work, there must be a database of information containing substantial information on each individual. By nature, biometric systems collect more information than just the users ' fingerprints, retinal patterns or other biometric data. An individual who uses a fingerprint contact system allows government agencies and local law enforcement access to their every move. Most systems will record the whereabouts of an individual at the time of scan. Organizations will have the ability to anticipate the actions of an individual, and the loss of privacy will grow tremendously. Cross-trading of an individual’s personal data will increase, as an organization will have the attainability to share data in the market. If biometric details such as your fingerprints are compromised, it is not going to be possible to provide you with a new scan right away.