GDPR fines are starting to come.

GDPR fines

Shortly after I posted about the Austrian GDPR fine, another fine was issued by the regulatory authority in Portugal. Late last week the German regulatory authority imposed another fine on an App maker. So the GDPR fines are beginning to come. Let’s take a quick look at these three cases and then see what you…

Read More

Shopping Safely Online – 2018 Edition

Like it or lump it, today is Cyber Monday here in Ireland now, because the retailers want it to be. So we have adopted another US tradition. Most Irish people prefer to buy their stuff in bricks and mortar stores. Online shopping, though, has been growing dramatically in recent years.

Read More

NUI Galway Data Breach – Lessons learned?

nui galway data breach

The NUI Galway data breach that was revealed this week is concerning. Particularly the initial reports about the breach, which weren’t very clear.

Read More

Facebook are only fined £500,000

Facebook are only fined £500,000

You remember the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica mess from earlier this year? Well, Facebook have been issued with a notice that they are to be fined £500,000 as a result of this. “What? Facebook are only fined £500,000?” I hear you cry.

Read More

GDPR hasn’t gone away.

GDPR hasn't gone away

Something I’ve noticed since the summer holidays came to an end, interest in GDPR related training and discussions have dropped away. I’ve asked around why this might be. The most common type of response is “Sure that GDPR thing was a pile of scare mongering. Nothing has happened. It’s like that Y2K nonsense we had…

Read More

The Chinese hacking server hardware

Chinese hacking server hardware

You may have heard some pretty scary headlines or stories recently about a Bloomberg Businessweek article. This was about the Chinese hacking server hardware by implanting little “bugs” onto the main electronic boards of the servers.

Read More

Facebook Breach – The DPC was very public about it.

Facebook Breach

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, you will have heard about the Facebook breach. This is where the accounts of at least 50 million people were compromised by evil doers.

Read More

How to deal with Ransomware.

Deal with Ransomware

I want to come back to this topic on how to deal with Ransomware. This is because I keep meeting business people in the training that I deliver who, either know of somebody or have themselves, suffered a Ransomware incident.

Read More

Vulnerable Shopping Carts lead to Credit Card breaches

Vulnerable Shopping Carts

You may have heard about the Ticketmaster data breach earlier this summer. You probably also have heard about the British Airways data breach at the start of this month. A new breach at another large online marketplace using the same technique shows that vulnerable shopping carts are being exploited more and more.

Read More

Dodgy extensions and not a builder in sight.

A lot of normal people might think about the phrase “dodgy extensions” and associate it with some kind of cowboy builder. But alas, the dodgy extensions to which I refer are in a web browser and these could lead you to a data breach or worse.

Read More

Holiday Data Breach Photos.

Most normal people go on holidays, forget about work, relax and enjoy themselves. They also, probably take lots of nice photos of the great places they’ve been and the nice food they’ve eaten. I went on holiday recently in remote, rural Ireland and I did pretty much all of the above.

Read More

Eir laptop theft – could have been worse

The eir laptop theft that was revealed this week was pretty … actually … it was really bad and deeply embarrassing for eir. However details that emerged from the statement by the Data Protection Commission showed that it could have been a LOT worse. 1,500 Laptops worse!

Read More

Sextortion scam – a follow up.

Sextortion scam follow up

This time last month I posted about a sextortion scam that was sending out large amounts of emails to people claiming to have recorded them watching porn. As proof that they meant business, they included an old password the victim had previously used. There have been some developments.

Read More

Identity theft enabled by fun quizzes.

What is your identity theft name

If you are on social media, you will no doubt have come across those fun quizzes. You know the ones, “What’s your Westeros name?” or “What was the number 1 song the day you were born?”

Read More