Nobody is safe from the latest round of data breaches plaguing American government offices, major corporations, and school districts. This week the NYC Department of Education along with the city of Fort Worth, Texas, were both targets of data breaches. Also, retired California educators and public servants were hit by a breach, making it clear that the US government is a key target for most hackers.
American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are both known for offering a long list of destinations throughout the United States and some other parts of the world. Two of America's largest airlines just suffered from a data breach that threatens to expose new pilots and cadets joining and hoping to join the airlines.
The NYC Department of Education manages all the public schools throughout the New York City metro area. More than 1.1 million students go to the managed schools, and the organization oversees all this activity while handling data for these students. The NYC Dept of Education was recently involved in a data breach connected with the MOVEit file transfer solution, and that data breach could have resulted in substantial data losses for faculty members and students in the districts.
Both CalPERS and CalSTRS are agencies that manage retirement funds and health benefits for retired California teachers, government employees, and more types of public service employees. These organizations handle a huge amount of personal and financial data for teachers and other individuals, and they even handle pensions for them. That's why it's so upsetting to learn that both CalPERS and CalSTRS were impacted by a recent data breach.
Elon Musk's ascension isn't the first thing to cause waves of scams on Twitter, and it certainly won't be the last. On July 20th of 2022, data belonging to over 5 million Twitter users was put up for sale on the internet underground for $30,000. The FTC reported that we've experienced a recent "gold mine for scammers" and the April bump to a 10,000-character limit (for Twitter Blue) only makes things more interesting.
Fort Worth is the fifth largest city in the state of Texas and approximately the 12th largest in the United States. The city is home to over 900,000 people and maintains a staff of thousands of individuals. The state manages a substantial amount of data in its servers, including public and private information that could be harmful if taken and shared with people online. That's why we were worried when we noted the city was breached, and over 500,000 files were taken.
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is a government organization that offers free or low-cost services to Idaho citizens to provide for their health and well-being. This includes things like Medicaid, food programs, and more. The organization is a government agency that manages a huge amount of data for different people.
Healthcare services offered by the government and private agencies took a serious hit this week with breaches against Johns Hopkins, Essen Health Care, Atrium Health at Wake Forest, and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Patients lost a significant amount of both personal and health information in this breach as a result. The Bank of NY Mellon was also a breach victim this week. Read below for the details.
