Security breaches continue to accelerate

May 12, 2009

Hackers penetrated the University of California, Berkeley student and alumni database, stealing the records of 160,000 individuals. The incident is the latest in a string of incidents that has some security experts calling for greater efforts in protecting data and critical networks.

Hackers penetrated the University of California, Berkeley student and alumni database, stealing the records of 160,000 individuals. The incident is the latest in a string of incidents that has some security experts calling for greater efforts in protecting data and critical networks.

This according to an article on ChannelInsider.com that claims that data breaches and even data hostage taking is on the rise. The article notes that the situation with the data history of the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program's data was encrypted by hackers with an unknown and so far unbroken encryption key-- and a ransom demand has still been unmet.

What the relevance of this last is for industrial functional security is obvious.

The article quotes Marcus Sachs from SANS as saying, "“It’s also inexcusable that we continue to run our computer networks as though they are some magical enterprise only understandable by geeks and nerds.”

Read the entire article here.

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