Chris Merritt - Dir. Solutions Marketing
Illinois’ New Data Protection Law
August 24th, 2011
News today, courtesy of Brendon Tavelli at Proskauer’s Privacy Law blog via the always excellent Office of Inadequate Security, of a new data breach notification bill just signed by Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois. Interesting to me both personally (Go Illini!!) and professionally, this bill (HB 3025) amends Illinois Public Act 097-0483 (the Personal Information Protection [...]
Key Steps to Navigate Around New Facebook Privacy Settings
January 4th, 2010
What’s all the fuss about the latest changes on Facebook? Simply put, the changes mean that nearly everything that you place on your Facebook page can now potentially be made available to anyone surfing the Internet. The latest Facebook changes are purported to be an enhancement to make the social networking site easier for people who are looking [...]
Chris Merritt - Dir. Solutions Marketing
Don’t Procrastinate on Red Flags Rule Compliance Despite Latest Delay
November 18th, 2009
So, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has, for the fourth time (!) delayed enforcement of the so-called “Red Flags” rules, according to a statement posted on the agency’s website. Compliance enforcement is now scheduled for June 1, 2010 –- in case you’re keeping score at home, the previous dates were 01-Nov-08 (original), 01-May-09 (first delay), [...]
Sesame Street Simple Facebook Guide to Surviving Malicious Attacks
October 30th, 2009
It certainly seems that not a week goes by without hearing about yet another attack on Facebook users. Last week it was a phishing scam driven by a botnet, and this week, we have two new and different phishing scams — one cleverly tricking users into revealing their passwords and another installing malware that quietly [...]
Chris Merritt - Dir. Solutions Marketing
Where the Money Is
June 8th, 2009
Willie Sutton is reputed to have said (although he didn’t, actually), when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is.” So, we’re not really surprised to learn that a new scam is on to liberate the contents of ATMs, and by more sophisticated means than the skimmers I’ve written about previously. Nope, [...]
Chris Merritt - Dir. Solutions Marketing
Beware of ATM Card Skimmers
May 5th, 2009
I ran across an interesting post in the Consumerist about a guy who found a card skimmer attached to his local ATM. Apparently, he was alert enough to notice that something wasn’t quite right, and pulled it right off the machine … and discovered that it was designed to read the info off a card [...]
Paul Zimski - IT Security Expert
Healthcare 2.0? The Security Skinny on Obama’s Stimulus Package
March 31st, 2009
On Tuesday February 17th, President Obama signed the economic stimulus package that carves out $19B for modernizing health information systems. The transition from paper to electronic or e-records in the healthcare industry has been happening for some time. Although in small numbers, the process has been slow to ramp up based on technology considerations and [...]
Heartland Data Breach: A Wish List from a Customer Whose Loyalty may be Waning
March 6th, 2009
The reported number of institutions impacted by the Heartland Payment Systems data breach continues to increase – it has already affected over 600 financial institutions. While we’ve heard plenty about the number of those impacted and have looked at the malware used to conduct this breach – what hasn’t been discussed is the impact from [...]
Chris Merritt - Dir. Solutions Marketing
Delayed, Again: Massachusetts Data Security Regulation
March 4th, 2009
Some time ago we wrote about the new Massachusetts Data Protection law, slated to come online in May this year (after being delayed from the start of 2009). As you may recall, this law (201 CMR 17.00) is stricter than past laws, more specific than any state’s data security regulations to date, and more expensive [...]
Chris Merritt - Dir. Solutions Marketing
The People in the Equation: Avoiding Malicious Scam Sites
February 16th, 2009
Here’s another entry in one of my fundamental observations about computer security: in the end, it comes down to applying human intelligence. A friend who works in the banking industry pointed this lovely advert out to me … Needless to say, this made it onto the pages of failblog.com, entitled “Scam Fail” (see here). Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa. [...]
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