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Rogue employees and hackers were the most commonly cited sources of data breaches reported during the first half of 2009, according to figures released this week by the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego based nonprofit. The ID Theft Center found that of the roughly 250 data breaches publicly reported in the United States between Jan. 1 and Jun. 12, victims blamed the largest share of incidents on theft by employees (18.4 percent) and hacking (18 percent). Taken together, breaches attributed to these two types of malicious attacks have increased about 10 percent over the same period in 2008. Some 44 states and the District of Columbia now have laws requiring entities that experience a breach to publicly disclose that fact. Yet, few breached entities report having done anything to safeguard data in the event that it is lost or stolen. The ITRC found only a single breach in the first half of 2009 in which the victim reported that the lost or stolen data was protected by encryption technology. "It is a dual problem here undeterred by law or common sense," said ITRC co-founder Linda Foley. "You would think if all these organizations have to notify, that they would take some steps to make sure their data doesn't get exposed in the first place."

The PCI DSS standard was released back in December 2004 and was quickly hailed as one of the most important private-industry data security standards ever developed. Over the past few years, however, amid a steady stream of news about breaches and thefts, the PCI DSS standards has been roundly criticized. At a congressional hearing this month, one congresswoman said, "I do want to dispel the myth once and for all that PCI compliance is enough to keep a company secure." Many would agree. A case in point noted by Network World: The breach at Hannaford Brothers, where hackers installed malware on the grocery store chain's internal servers to seize card numbers as they were swiped by customers. Hannaford was certified a PCI DSS-compliant company as the scam was in progress. Heartland Payment Systems, before its scam broke in the news, was also certified compliant by Visa. Visa defends the standard as a way to minimize theft if properly implemented, and you certainly can't blame PCI DSS entirely for recent thefts. For all we know, there would have been many more if not for the standard. Still, the general view is that the PCI DSS standard has become overly complex and has done little thus far to stop fraud, as fraud artists get sophisticated technologically.

Enterprise employees frequently use social networking tools, most notably Web-based applications. It's no surprise more organizations are wondering what happens if social networking data becomes relevant to an e-discovery investigation. How does an enterprise go about discovering and assessing Web 2.0 data? How responsible is an organization, legally speaking, for the information that's out there in the Web 2.0 world? What risks arise from e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 data, and how can you mitigate them? In this tip, we will look at e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 and consider the strongest options for minimizing risks to the organization. E-discovery basics We begin with a quick look at what e-discovery is and how it can create risk. Essentially, e-discovery is the electronic extension of the legal process of discovery, which Wikipedia defines as "the pre-trial phase in a lawsuit in which each party through the law of civil procedure can request documents and other evidence from other parties or can compel the production of evidence by using a subpoena or through other discovery devices, such as requests for production and depositions." If you're an IT person, not a lawyer, it's important to note that the rules governing the discovery process now require plaintiffs to address all electronically stored information or ESI. In other words, if your organization faces litigation, it will have to deal with the issue of e-discovery, which will entail a whole lot more than turning over some old emails. Depending upon your role in the organization, the first you may hear of this is a "notice of litigation" with perhaps a "litigation hold directive" containing a "preservation directive." Here is a generic e-discovery request below. Apart from a few limiting factors, such as subject matter, named persons and a specified time period, the scope of such a notice is likely to be broad; blame standard procedure, not some high-powered attorney pushing his or her lu

A 10-month cyberespionage investigation has found that 1,295 computers in 103 countries and belonging to international institutions have been spied on, with some circumstantial evidence suggesting China may be to blame. The 53-page report, released on Sunday, provides some of the most compelling evidence and detail of the efforts of politically-motivated hackers while raising questions about their ties with government-sanctioned cyberspying operations. It describes a network which researchers have called GhostNet, which primarily uses a malicious software program called gh0st RAT (Remote Access Tool) to steal sensitive documents, control Web cams and completely control infected computers. "GhostNet represents a network of compromised computers resident in high-value political, economic and media locations spread across numerous countries worldwide," said the report, written by analysts with the Information Warfare Monitor, a research project of the SecDev Group, a think tank, and the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto. "At the time of writing, these organizations are almost certainly oblivious to the compromised situation in which they find themselves." The analysts did say, however, they have no confirmation if the information obtained has ended up being valuable to the hackers or whether it has been commercially sold or passed on as intelligence. Although evidence shows that servers in China were collecting some of the sensitive data, the analysts were cautious about linking the spying to the Chinese government. Rather, China has a fifth of the world's Internet users, which may include hackers that have goals aligning with official Chinese political positions.

A very heated reaction has followed the interview I conducted yesterday with Robert Carr, CEO of Heartland Payment Systems. One reader even said the resulting Q&A made his "blood boil." Why the outrage? Because Carr did something a lot of people find unacceptable. He threw someone else under the proverbial bus for his company's failure to keep customer credit and debit card numbers out of evil hands. Specifically, he thrust an angry finger at the QSAs who came in to inspect the security controls Heartland had in place to meet the requirements of PCI security. In the article, [Heartland CEO on Data Breach: QSAs Let Us Down] Carr said, "The audits done by our QSAs (Qualified Security Assessors) were of no value whatsoever. To the extent that they were telling us we were secure beforehand, that we were PCI compliant, was a major problem. The QSAs in our shop didn't even know this was a common attack vector being used against other companies. We learned that 300 other companies had been attacked by the same malware. I thought, 'You've got to be kidding me.' That people would know the exact attack vector and not tell major players in the industry is unthinkable to me. I still can't reconcile that." That one comment brought down the house, and not in a favorable way. "I just read Bill Brenner's interview with Heartland Payment Systems' CEO Bob Carr and truthfully, my blood is boiling," Mike Rothman, SVP of strategy at eIQnetworks and chief blogger at Security Incite wrote in a counterpoint piece CSOonline ran today. "Basically, he's throwing his QSA under the bus for the massive data breach that happened under his watch. Basically, because the QSA didn't find anything, therefore he should be off the hook. I say that's a load of crap."