UK Hospitals Receive 230,000 Euro Fine For Data Leak

A collective of UK hospitals has been fined more than 230,000 euros since it had placed the private information of staff inadvertently on its website. It was the national insurance number, date of birth, religion and sexual orientation of 6,500 employees.

The collective discovered the data breach after 10 months and had another 5 months to inform the affected employees. The information was provided voluntarily by the staff, so that collectively an annual overview of diversity and equality could publish within hospitals. The spreadsheets were found to contain hidden data simply became visible by double-clicking on a table. Because of the data breach, the UK data protection authority ICO now fined 185,000 pounds (the equivalent of more than 230,000 euros).

Microsoft Buys Israeli Data Security Officer Secure Islands

Microsoft has the Israeli data security company Secure Islands taken over, as both companies have today announced. Secure Islands the technology adds security to information once it is made ​​or used.This is to prevent loss of data, among other things.

The companies must give more visibility and control over their data, as well as where sensitive data resides and how they are used. Microsoft wants to add the technology to their own Azure Rights Management Service. According to the software giant will it help customers to protect their corporate data, regardless of where they are stored. Secure Islands was founded nine years ago and has, among other UBS, OSRAM, Vodafone and Credit Suisse as clients. How much Microsoft paid was not disclosed, but according to rumors is about $ 150 million.

British Government Would Want To Prohibit End-To-End Encryption

The British government should IT companies to commit to no longer offer encryption services even where they have no access to the data. The bill will be presented tomorrow, as claims the Daily Telegraph. According to British newspaper allowed companies like Apple and Google will soon no longer offer advanced encryption which even they can not decrypt.

The UK government is not going to ban encryption in its entirety, because it plays an important role in protecting data. It is especially end-to-end encryption, where only the sender and recipient can read the message that the authorities concern. The bill would require IT companies soon to always be able to access the customer data.

"The government is clear that we must find a way to collaborate with industry and ensure that with clear monitoring and a robust legal framework, the police and intelligence services access to the content of the communications of terrorists and criminals can get, to resolve such matters and police to prevent crime, "said a ministry spokesman. He says that this means that companies communicate on their networks should be able to approach if they get a warrant.

Researchers Develop Scanner For Cloud Services

Researchers at two British universities have developed a scanner to prevent criminals steal confidential files in the cloud and upload illegal files to cloud services. The system is called Xdet , which stands for Extrusion detection.

Xdet makes a signature of private files and store them. The signature is then compared with the signatures of files exchanged with the cloud service. "This way, unauthorized uploads or downloads of potentially confidential data can be detected and prevented," the researchers compared ScienceDaily . Who argue that even upload illegal files to the cloud in this way can be noticed.

The Xdet software is placed between the cloud server and distributed file storage, instead of the perimeter of the cloud network. This has several advantages. So Xdet itself is protected by perimeter security solutions such as firewalls and IDS.In addition, it is scalable, and better in this way can the cloud provider to use network-based encryption to protect data during transport.

Government Asks Facebook 76 Times For User Data

In the last half of last year, the Dutch authorities Facebook 76 times asked for user data. The data requests had 84 users / accounts relate. In about 65% of the cases data was given. That let Facebook know in a new transparency report.

In the first half of 2014, the social networking site got 41 more requests related to 45 accounts. This data was presented in 56% of cases. The total number of requests of last year amounted to 117 and 129 accounts were sought information. In 2013, Facebook began tracking data requests. That year, however, received the social network 34 requests related to 43 accounts.In one year the number of requests and sought accounts is therefore tripled.

Facebook also claims that there is an increase in the number of government requests occurred worldwide. Worldwide, there was relative to the first half of 2014, an increase of 11%. In the United States and Germany, the number of data requests suffers. Facebook states that it evaluates each data request and in the case of imperfections will fight back. "We also continue to exert pressure so that governments around the world adjust their surveillance policies in a way that benefits the security of people, while their rights and freedoms continue to be protected."