Fidelity National Information Services Inc. said last week that a senior database administrator responsible for defining and enforcing data access rights at one of its subsidiaries sold the personal information of about 2.3million consumers to a data broker. The broker in turn sold a subset of the data to “a limited number” of direct marketing companies, Fidelity National said.
The Jacksonville, Fla.-based company, which offers data processing and outsourcing services to financial institutions and other businesses, added that the stolen data included names, addresses, birth dates, and bank account and credit card information.
For now, at least, it appears that the companies that bought the information have used it mainly to send marketing solicitations to the affected individuals, according to Fidelity National. “We have no reason to believe that the theft resulted in any subsequent fraudulent activity,” said Renz Nichols, president of the company’s Certegy Check Services Inc. unit.
The database administrator has since been fired, and Fidelity National has filed a civil complaint in a court in St. Petersburg, Fla., against him and the companies that received the stolen data, seeking its return. Fidelity National said it also is “encouraging immediate prosecution” of the DBA by law enforcement authorities.
An IT worker at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs didn’t properly secure data stored on an external hard drive that was lost or stolen in January, and he then initially lied about the scope of the data breach, according to a June 29 report by the VA’s inspector general.
But the 79-page report also blamed officials at the VA’s medical center in Birmingham, Ala., for letting the worker access “vast amounts” of information that was beyond the scope of the projects he was working on. In addition, the directors of the center were taken to task for not ensuring that proper safeguards were put in place for securing data on external drives.
The Iomega drive, which has yet to be recovered, contained Social Security numbers and other personal data on more than 250,000 veterans and 1.3 million medical providers.
VA Inspector General George Opfer’s report recommended that the agency take “appropriate administrative action” against the worker in question, who is classified as an IT specialist, and the top two officials at the Birmingham facility. The report also called on VA CIO Robert Howard and the undersecretary in charge of the agency’s medical facilities to create new data security policies and upgrade existing ones.
Ask Rackmount Ranger: What kind of mounting rails are available on the ERK cabinet?
Zakir Davis
Dear Zakir:
The ERK cabinet comes standard with a front set of vertical mounting rails. The rails are tapped to accept 10-32 rack screws. Unfortunately, due to the width of the ERK series cabinets, there are no rails available with square untapped holes. Cabinets that are, or can be, equipped with square hole rails are:
The growing popularity of hi-tech devices, such as flat-screen TVs and digital radios, threaten to undermine efforts to save energy, a report says. UK consumers spend £12bn a year on electronics, much of which is less efficient than older technology, a study by the Energy Saving Trust found.
By 2020, the gadgets will account for about 45% of electricity used in UK households, the organisation projected.
Paula Owen, author of the report called The Ampere Strikes Back, said household appliances currently consumed about a third of an average home’s electricity. But she warned this was likely to increase as a result of people buying more energy-intensive devices.
“Your old-fashioned, bulky cathode ray tube TV on average consumed about 100 watts of electricity when it was switched on,” Dr Owen explained.
“What we are seeing now is a trend for much bigger flat-screened TVs. On average, we are seeing a three-fold increase in the energy needed to power these TVs.
“Pretty much in every other sector [such as fridges and washing machines], we find that as the technology moves on, the products get more and more efficient.
Europe’s major consumer group BEUC said Wednesday that it feared Internet search engine Google Inc.’s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers’ choice of Web content.
Their plea to EU regulators comes after U.S. consumer privacy advocacy groups asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to look at how the two companies, when combined, would have access to an unprecedented amount of data on consumers’ Web usage and Internet search habits.
Cornelia Kutterer, BEUC’s senior legal adviser, said the association had asked the European Commission and other European authorities to look into privacy concerns — even though the two companies have not yet requested EU approval for the US$3.1 billion (euro2.29 billion) deal.
‘’They have so far complementary databases with private data. If they merge them, this could lead to unmatched databases of profiles,'’ Kutterer told the AP. ‘’If they can combine them, this could lead to a violation of user privacy rights.'’
In a letter to data privacy and consumer rights regulators, BEUC said the new company would have and could exploit enormous amounts of personal information about users as they click on Web pages and applications.
It has been a pleasure working with you and your company. I really appreciate the extra effort that you and Jack have put forward on our behalf to supply us with the materials that we needed. I will definitely be touching base with you again in the future as we are planning on acquiring several more of these items to facilitate the upgrade of our existing locations as well and our new store openings.
Thank you again for all of your time and effort.
Matthew Strong
Network Administrator
Information Support Concepts (ISC) announces the launch of new, more capable Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs). There are four new series of UPSs available. Each one is more capable than the series it replaced, with higher power factors and new options. All series are RoHS compliant, and use the same management software. This provides great commonality should clients need different series UPSs for different applications. Larger capacity units (EnterprisePlus and Endeavor) have load shedding functions to ensure the most critical components continuously receive power.
Question: If I already own a slim5 cabinet, can I buy the pieces necessary to turn it into an AXS?
Answer: The AXS is a slide out system in a host enclosure. The portion that slides in and out is similar to a slim5, but not identical. The parts that are common are the vertical rails only. The remaining parts of the AXS could be purchased separately, but the cost would probably exceed that of just buying the complete AXS system. In addition, the AXS is factory assembled, so trying to retrofit a slim5 into an AXS requires a lot of time and effort.
It is probably not worth the time or the money to attempt to turn a regular slim5 into and AXS system. However, it could be done.
Microsoft may be discounted in some circles as being behind, they continue to get oohs and aahs from some very sophisticated tech events. Think of what SeaDragon and Photosynth can do for us in the future.
