Big Brother Watch has taken a fresh stance against the rollout of facial recognition cameras in towns across Britain. The civil liberties and privacy campaigning organisation took to Twitter earlier today, saying: “Facial recognition surveillance means our identities are checked en masse. That’s a reversal of the presumption of innocence that’s so at the heart […]
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#Privacy: Nedbank users impacted by data breach
Nedbank Group, one of South Africa’s largest banks, has disclosed a security incident warning customers of a potential impact of data. In the notice, the bank explained that the breach occurred at Computer Facilities (Pty) Ltd., a third-party service provider that issues SMS and email marketing information for Nedbank. Approximately, 1.7 million customers were potentially […]
#Privacy: US non-profit exposes private student documents
The Institute of International Education (IIE) has unwittingly exposed a database containing the personal information of thousands of students. Security researcher Bob Diachenko, who discovered the database, explained that IIE utilised a content management system, Drupal, which stored the documents on two identical MongoDB databases hosted at different IP addresses. Both databases were misconfigured and […]
#Privacy: World Health Organization warns of ongoing Coronavirus phishing attacks
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a warning about phishing attacks impersonating the organisation. Cyber criminals are now capitalising on the fears surrounding the global health emergency Coronavirus, by disguising themselves as WHO. “WHO is aware of suspicious email messages attempting to take advantage of the 2019 novel coronavirus emergency,” said the agency in […]
#Privacy: Photo app exposes over 100K user data
Popular photo app, PhotoSquared, has exposed the privacy and security of 100,000s of its users due to an exposed database. Researchers at vpnMentor discovered the database on January 30, to which the AWS S3 bucket was found unsecured with no password protection. The database in question contained over a million records, amounting to 94.7 GB […]
#Privacy: UK council struck by possible ransomware attack
Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, in the north-east of England, have had their online public services down for over a week following a cyber-attack. According to reports, on February 8, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council had its IT systems targeted, resulting in its online services being shut down for more than a week and impacting […]
#Privacy: Growth forecast for cybersecurity markets until 2027
According to a report by Fortune Business Insights, titled “Cyber Security Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis”, the global cyber security market value is expected to reach USD 281.74 billion by 2027, from its current standing at USD 112.01 billion. The report also contains an in-depth analysis of the various factors and dynamics that will shape the market during the forecast […]
#Privacy: FairBridge Inn & Suites exposes nearly 8.1 million records
An unprotected database has resulted in the exposure of a customer booking platform. Discovered by security researcher Jeremiah Fowler, on December 11, 2019, the database belonging to Fairbridge Inn & Suites was not password protected, thus open and publicly accessible to anyone to view. A vast majority of the 8.1 million records were Nginx logs and […]
Data protection conference comes to Maastricht
On 21st and 22nd April, Maastricht University hosts PrivSec Maastricht, a two-day data protection conference exploring the data privacy and cybersecurity challenges that businesses face in the modern era. Three content theatres will offer practical and theoretical approaches to privacy and security. Focus topics include: Global Privacy Laws Building a Global Privacy Programme Corporate Compliance […]
#Privacy: Blame for phishing attacks aimed at social media platforms
With the ever evolving cyber threats, it is important to we understand our social media accounts and the way in which they make us vulnerable. Social media (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat…) is free to members because the companies make money by selling targeted advertisements to their users. Ever wonder why, after “liking” a particular […]