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Sad State Of Data Security |
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Source: Information Week - Posted by Pax Dickinson
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How does this keep happening? Companies have been publicly humiliated, slapped with audits, and threatened with prosecution, but sensitive personal data continues to be compromised. The U.S. Department of Justice is the latest to demonstrate its information-security incompetence. The mistake: exposing Social Security numbers on its Web site.
It's the IT problem that just won't go away. From the time early last year that ChoicePoint Inc. admitted it had been duped into revealing personal data to identity thieves, dozens of other businesses, government agencies, and schools have followed with their own admissions of ineptitude. In most cases, victims can't do much more than keep a watchful eye on their financial statements and credit reports--and hope for the best. Not surprisingly, fraud is on the rise and consumer confidence on the decline.
The Justice Department's blunder came to light when InformationWeek investigated the concerns of Nick Staff, a systems security manager at a large bank, who had grown frustrated when Justice failed to remove several Social Security numbers from its Web site, www.usdoj.gov, after Staff contacted the agency directly. In one case, the Social Security number of a woman involved in a 2003 immigration-review case was included in documentation about the case. Additional site searches yielded other peoples' numbers in a half-dozen other places.
Read this full article at Information Week
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