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Yet another breach of sensitive, unencrypted data is making news in the United Kingdom. This time the breach puts Royal Air Force staff at serious risk of being targeted for blackmail by foreign intelligence services or others.

The breach involves audio recordings with high ranking officers who were being interviewed in-depth for a security clearance. In the interviews, the officers disclosed information about extra-marital affairs, drug abuse, visits to prostitutes, medical conditions, criminal convictions and debt histories — information the military needed to determine their security risk. (link)

U.C. Berkeley officials said Friday that their database had been hacked. Hackers managed to infiltrate a restricted computer database of 160,000 students. The databases also included additional personal information of parents, spouses. A total of 97,000 social security numbers were stolen. (link)

Fantastic little program for complete image backup and restore abilities. The trial version gives you 15 days to play around with. Use it, make a back up image. Then, just for kicks, wipe your hard drive. Of course make sure you have the image on a USB drive or CD/DVD. Then go back, do the basic OS install. Then install the Acronis True Image trial. Next stick in your USB drive. Run the program and select Restore image and select the image from the USB/CD/DVD drive. Then just sit back and watch while your computer gets restored back to it's original setting prior to the wipe. A very usefull program when you want to minimize downtime during a server, pc, laptop failure. When these problems arise, just pop in a new hard drive do the basic install, an

Bill Margeson, co-founder, president, and CEO of CBL Data Recovery Technologies (www.cbltech.com), says the notebook is becoming the computing platform of choice vs. the larger PC workstation. He says, “The notebook affords individuals mobility, but not without risks to both the hardware and the corporate data stored on it. Notebooks are more prone to being bumped, jarred, and dropped, thus increasing the risk of physical damage and subsequent data loss.”

Margeson says IT may not have to change its approach to PC management, but simply extend it to encompass notebooks and other devices. He adds, “As enterprises face today’s economic challenges, some may be transitioning to flexible office environments. While employers may reduce the total work space to house employees to improve their bottom line, employees who work remotely from the convenience of their homes or client sites do present challenges to the staff who must manage remote IT assets, which include notebooks and PDAs, but more importantly, the data which resides on them.” (link)

That made recovering the DVD data even more important. Two local data recovery firms had already said the videotaped interview on the DVD was unrecoverable. But by chance, Isaac's parents had a neighbor who was a retired Seagate employee. Having heard of Seagate, Isaac decided to contact the company about a medium they didn't even manufacture, hoping they could recover the data.

Seagate's i365 subsidiary has a data recovery service -- Seagate Recovery Services (SRS) -- that took on the job of trying to bring the November 2006 police interview back to life. SRS loaded the DVD into a player, but "there was nothing on the DVD.

When IEEE 1667 is in place, the risks associated with this vulnerability decrease substantially because only authenticated devices will be accepted. I can provide my employees with specific types of IEEE 1667-compliant devices that can be authenticated and used. All others, including that device you bought at Fry's Electronics, won't work. Assuming that you can audit the use of these devices, this provides security without compromising usability--a win-win in the security management world. (link)

Apple-obsessed financial analyst Charlie Wolf said today in a research note that Apple could cut the price of the 8GB iPhone to $99. Why? Apparently, just because they can. At least, based on his guesstimations on the iPhone margins and costs, and we can only guess, his famed telepathic powers, animal entrails reading abilities, and the shiny 8-ball he has hidden in the bottom drawer of his work desk. (link)

The emerging market for budget netbook computers is seen as a big opportunity for Linux, which appeals to hardware manufacturers because of its lower licensing costs and better flexibility than Windows. It can also be tailored to work well with unusual form factors and limited specs. Although Linux seems like a perfect fit for these products, consumers have been slow to warm up to the platform and may not yet be ready to leave the world of Windows behind. (more)

As part of a compliance project launched one and a half years ago, Brent Zimmer, systems specialist at the university, was working with attorneys and archivists to determine which data was most important to keep and for how long. But it soon became clear that it was just as important to identify which data should be thrown away. Zimmer was aware of the importance of being able to quickly produce required information during litigation, "but the thing we never thought about was keeping data too long," he says. The risk is keeping data that you wouldn't otherwise be required to produce, but as long as it's discoverable, it could be used as evidence against you. (link)

Biswahoman Pani worked for Intel. Claiming to miss his wife, he requested a transfer from California to Intel's Hudson facility where she worked. That same day, when the request was granted, Pani turned in his resignation and announced that he'd be taking vacation for his last two weeks at the company. His new job would be with a hedge fund. But as an FBI document reports, Pani wasn't going to a hedge fund. He was actually hired to work at AMD. And he spent the next two weeks with his Intel-networked laptop collecting confidential designs. (link)