CHRONOLOGY OF DATA SECURITY BREACHES

The personal medical records of tens of thousands of people have been lost by the NHS in a series of grave data security leaks. Between January and April this year, 140 security breaches were reported within the NHS – more than the total number from inside central Government and all local authorities combined.

In February, Bill Oesterle began seeing nearly twice the normal number of transactions being declined for customers who had set up auto-billing on their accounts. The co-founder of Angie's List -- a service that aggregates consumer reviews of local contractors and physicians -- said he originally assumed more customers were simply having trouble making ends meet in a down economy.

As Virginia DHP officials await the completion of an investigation into reports of a massive data breach affecting 8 million records from the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program, people are urged to be vigilant for signs of identity theft. On April 30, a message demanding a $10 million ransom for the data was posted on the Prescription Monitoring Program's Website.

Monster.com is advising its users to change their passwords after data including e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers were stolen from its database.

Computerworld - A data breach disclosed today by Heartland Payment Systems Inc. may well displace TJX Companies Inc.'s January 2007 breach in the record books as the largest ever involving payment data with potentially over 100 million cards being compromised.

Heartland, a Princeton, N.J.-based provider of credit and debit card processing services, said that unknown intruders had broken into its systems sometime last year and planted malicious software to steal card data carried on the company's networks.

Read more...