Intel

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the relentless pressure on health care workers continues to exact a toll. Just this month, dozens of nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Massachusetts went on strike to protest staffing shortages; a physicians union in Washington state staged protests over alleged safety violations and staffing shortages; and a national nurses union raised…

Data security experts are sounding the alarm to warn those engaging in the latest social media trend of sharing celebratory COVID-19 “vaccine selfies” depicting themselves holding their Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccination record card. Including these records in such photos, experts caution, could expose the kind of information—such as full name and date of birth—criminals use to commit…

Cybersecurity experts are warning consumers about a new scam that capitalizes on the pandemic forcing many seasonal gift shops and pop-up markets to go virtual this year. In a scam alert issued on November 13, the Better Business Bureau said cybercriminals are using copycat shopping event sites and social media pages to charge admission and steal credit card data. In…

Walmart will soon begin testing a grocery delivery program that uses autonomous vehicles, the retailer announced November 10. The pilot program, a partnership with California-based driverless car company Cruise LLC, will send grocery orders directly to customers in Cruise\'s electric, self-driving cars. The program, set to launch in Scottsdale, Arizona early next year, builds on an express delivery service Walmart…

Last week, the personal data of employees and students in a Las Vegas public school district with about 320,000 students was made public after the district refused to pay a hacker’s ransom. The released documents contained Clark County Public School District personnel and student records, Social Security numbers, addresses, grades and other private information stolen in an August 27 ransomware…

A Georgia high school that made headlines for its packed hallways and unmasked students announced Aug. 9 that it would close for at least two days after it identified nine cases of COVID-19. Six students and three staff members tested positive for the virus after the first week of in-person instruction at the school, one of the first to reopen…

Michigan’s largest healthcare system recently announced a data breach that may have compromised 6,000 patients’ protected health information. The breach reportedly occurred after six employee email accounts were exposed in a phishing scam in January. The eight-hospital network with 167 outpatient locations, notified patients on July 28 of a “data security incident” that could have exposed patient names, dates of…

Two patients are pursuing class-action status for their lawsuits against a Colonie, New York health care company and its accounting firm over a 2019 data breach that reportedly exposed the sensitive information of 170,000 patients. The lawsuits allege BST & Co. CPAs, the accounting firm for Community Care Physicians, experienced a ransomware attack in December 2019 and failed to disclose…

Cyberattacks have spiked dramatically since the COVID-19 crisis began, leading to what some are calling a “cybercrime pandemic” as hackers capitalize on vulnerabilities inherent in a newly remote workforce. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is receiving between 3,000 to 4,000 new internet crime complaints each day, compared to an average 1,000 daily before the pandemic. Phishing scams alone have…

The novel coronavirus (or COVID-19) pandemic has forced the emergence of a new digital workspace to keep businesses functioning during the crisis. With more than 75 percent of Americans and many Canadians engaging in some form of social distancing, many companies now have almost every employee working from home, adding a new level of digital security vulnerability. Unsecured wireless networks,…

A smartphone app marred by alleged technical and design flaws is being blamed for a days-long delay in reporting results from the February 3 Iowa U.S. presidential election caucus. The backup, which caused widespread confusion among voters and Democratic presidential candidates, has been linked in part to an app developed by Shadow, Inc. for the Iowa Democratic Party. Although the…

An 8-year-old girl from Desoto County, Mississippi experienced a terrifying ordeal last month when a hacker accessed a Ring security camera in her bedroom. The girl was playing in her room when an eerie song came through the camera’s speaker, followed by a man’s voice identifying himself as Santa Claus and encouraging her to “destroy” her room and break things.…