Information security analytics

One of Standard Insurance Company's vendors accessed a file that was inadvertently disclosed on the vendor's system.  Names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and dates of birth could have been accessed between October 7 and October 18.  The issue was discovered when an insurance policyholder noticed they had access to the information and contacted Standard Insurance Company. Source

Some Japanese universities found out the hard way about the risks of networked multifunction printers: Personal information on students and other university members, which is read by and stored in all-in-one machines at the University of Tokyo and two other universities, was left accessible to the public via the Internet, it has been learned.

From The Local in Sweden: Three million Swedes may have had their medical journals available to prying eyes, after a large-scale IT failure affected patients in Stockholm and Gotland. The Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper, which made the discovery, reported on Wednesday that there were signs that intruders had tried to access medical journals.

Baltimore County authorities say they found Social Security numbers and other personal information from more than 12,000 current and former county workers on the computer of a man who used to work for a county information-technology contractor. The man is in custody in another state and is to be extradited to Maryland to face charges in an unrelated identity-theft case. Police say the hard drive on a personal computer seized by authorities contains information that includes county employees' home addresses, salaries, leave balances and county identification numbers.

Genesis Rehabilitation Services  in Pennsylvania reports that an employee lost a thumb drive with the unencrypted personal information of 33 employees, agency employees, or applicants to GRS. The information on the drive included individuals’ names, postal or email addresses, and Social Security numbers.

Staff members with a postal delivery company prepare packages in Yiwu, Zhejiang province. A Chinese express courier, Yuantong Express, may lose clients after media reports that personal information about its customers was sold online. Postal delivery company Yuantong Express could face falling customer numbers after media reports that personal information on the company's express envelopes is being peddled on the Internet.

Three Chinese characters and a search bar are the only features to be found on the website chakaifang.info. However as internet users throughout China discovered last week, the nondescript website contained detailed records of individual guest bookings at hotels across the nation, including their names, addresses and phone numbers.

After being found to have had a leak of customers' personal information which were then sold online, Shanghai YTO Express Logistics Co said later Tuesday that it has reported the case to the police and is conducting an internal investigation, news portal xinhuanet.com reported Wednesday. Media reports on Tuesday said that YTO Express customers' personal information including names, addresses and phone numbers, were being sold on Chinese e-commerce website taobao.com for about 1 yuan ($0.16) each.

A Vietnamese national has been indicted in the District of New Hampshire for allegedly participating in an international scheme to steal and sell hundreds of thousands of Americans’ personally identifiable information through various underground websites that he operated.

Download Global Data Leakage Report H1 2013 The Global Data Leakage Report for the first half of 2013 by InfoWatch Analytical Labs.