January 31, 2008 The Davidison Companies had a server breached. Read article here.
The Davidson Companies, a Montana-based financial-services firm, said this week that one of its databases, containing the names and Social Security numbers of 226,000 current and past clients, was illegally accessed "by a third party through a sophisticated network intrusion.".

January 12, 2008 California State University Stanislaus had a server breached. Read article here.
The university's food service vendor received numerous complaints from its customers that they were seeing illicit activity on their credit cards they used at the operation. An investigation showed that the credit card information came from a server that Sodexho is in the process of securing.

January 9, 2008 University of Georgia in Athens had a server breached. Read article here.
The university discovered that between December 29th and 31st, 2007 a hacker from a foreign IP address had accessed personal information from over 4200 former and prospective residents of a univeristy housing complex. Once the problem was discovered the server was taken offline.

December 14, 2007 University of Michigan in Flint had many servers breached. Read article here.
The university discovered this on December 6th, 2007 and has yet to determine the scope, but University officials were quoted as saying, "It's difficult at this point to really know what's on there, or what may or may not have been accessed."

October 17, 2007 Track Data Securities Suffers Data Breach. Read article here.

Traditional multi-layered security requires patching and probably not updated at Track Data Securities allowing their network to be breached.

September 24, 2007 ABN Amro Suffer P2P Data Breach Read full article here
Over 5000 personal records, including social security numbers, were leaked by a ABN Amro Mortgage former employee by using P2P -- Peer-2-Peer -- file sharing software.

The non-Steelcape traffic, which would have been the P2P, would have not made it into the private network if Steelcape zones were deployed to segregate their network.

September 14, 2007 TD Ameritrade Breach Read full article here.
TD Ameritrade discovered that a database containing Names and Emails had been breached while investigating complaints about spam from its customers. The same database contained social security numbers, but it was assessed that no social security numbers were taken.

This is another example of how current security products can be breached by hackers. There is no detail on the attack, but the classic scenario is that a hacker accesses the internal network through some vulnerability on a web server or other outward facing host. Steelcape could have been deployed between the DMZ and private network to avoid a breach.

July 21, 2007 University of Michigan Read full article here.
The University of Michigan has notified 5,500 current and former students that a hacker gained access to personal information on two School of Education databases. University technology administrators noticed suspicious activity on a server on July 3 and the letters went out July 16.

July 20, 2007 US Air Forces Europe
Because military support contractor Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) failed to properly secure one of its FTP servers, personal information of more than 580,000 households of military personnel may have been compromised when the company transmitted unencrypted names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and health information to its military contract customers. Although SAIC announced the breach Friday, it had known about the problems since May 29, when U.S. Air Forces Europe notified SAIC that it had detected “an unsecure transmission of personal information concerning uniformed service members and other individuals,” an incident that may be related to one previously reported here. Affected are service members and family members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Department of Homeland Security. The breakdown includes 173,939 Army; 151,315 Air Force; 96,925 Navy; 26,171 Marine and 10,415 Coast Guard. All told, the breach involves data on 867,000 individuals

Steelcape software agents or secure applets could have facilitated a Steelcape session that would have protected the data and made it undetectable by hackers.

July 17, 2007 Western Union
Western Union is notifying some 20,000 customers of a database breach that may have compromised their personal information,
The thieves got names, addresses, phone numbers, and complete credit-card information by breaching a Western Union database sometime in late May, according to a July 6 letter sent to customers by James Keese, Western Union's privacy officer. A company spokeswoman Sherry Johnson told reporters that the database was "offline" and could not have been accessed via the Western Union Website.

Hackers could have taken advantage of the open ports for SSL on the firewall and breached the internal network or they could have hijacked the connection.

July 17, 2007 Kingston Technologies
A September 2005 security breach that remained undetected until "recently" may have compromised the names, addresses and credit card details of roughly 27,000 online customers of this computer memory vendor. According to a spokesman, Kingston's IT team "detected irregularities" in the company computer systems at some unspecified point in time and -- along with a team of forensic computer experts -- began investigating the issues. It was not until after that probe was completed and a final report released on May 22 that Kingston could confirm the scope of the intrusion and its impact. But the company did not offer details on how or when the breach was discovered and how long it waited to notify customers about the potential compromise of data. Kingston, which had $3 billion in sales last year, also did not offer any explanation on the nature and scope of the breach itself or why it remained undetected for so long. The spokesman added that the breach is believed to have been perpetrated by an external attacker.

June 27, 2007 University of California, Davis
(Davis, Ca.)
Computer-security safeguards were breached and accessed information including the applicants' names, birth dates and, in most cases, Social Security numbers. 1,120

June 11, 2007 Pfizer
Pharmalot reported that here was an unauthorized breach of privacy data, including names and social security numbers. Breach was caused by an employee’s spouse downloading and installing unathorized file sharing software. The names, social security numbers, and in some instances, addresses and bonus information of approximately 17,000 present and former Pfizer colleagues, were exposed to one or more third parties.
The drugmaker is offering a free year’s worth of credit monitoring.

If basic best practices were followed by Pfizer this could have been avoided. In the case that they wanted to deploy Steelcape as a VPN replacement all traffic outside the private tunnel would have been blocked by the firewall with the help of Steelcape.

June 9, 2007 University of Virginia
For more information about the breach The Washington Post
Between April 2005 and April 2007 hackers gained access to a database server containing the personal information of more than 5700 faculty members. Ground zero of the attack was an academic web server and from there they breached the database server.

The specific details of the University’s Security Strategy is unknown, but even with NAC and IPS in place the rules of the devices may have not been configured correctly. With Steelcape, zones could have been implemented segregating the sensitive areas of the University’s network from attack.

May 21, 2007 Columbia Bank
(Fair Lawn, NJ) Columbia Bank notified its online banking customers of a hacking incident. Names and SSNs were accessed, but account numbers and passwords were not.

This is a classic example of the shortcomings of traditional network security solutions. If the Server containing personal information was Steelcape enabled behind a locked down firewall the hacker would have not gained access.

May 19, 2007 Illinois Dept. of Financial and Professional Regulation
(Chicago, IL)
For information about breach,
http://www.idfpr.com
For information about ID theft, www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov A computer server in the office of the Illinois Dept. of Financial and Professional Regulation was breached earlier this year. SSNs, tax numbers, and addresses of banking and real estate professionals were exposed. The hacking incident was discovered May 3. Affected: 300,000 licensees and applicants.

May 12, 2007 Goshen College
(Goshen, IN)
info@goshen.edu
(866) 877-3055 A hacker accessed a college computer that contained the names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and phone numbers of students and information on some parents with the suspected motivation of using the system to send spam e-mails. Affected: 7,300

In this instance a Server was breached and the hacker was able to gain access to other servers via the breached server. The Breached server could have been segregated from the internal network while the LAN could have been Steelcape enabled protected by a locked down firewall.

May 8, 2007 Univ. of Missouri
(Columbia, MO)
(866) 241-5619
A hacker accessed a computer database containing the names and Social Security numbers of employees of any campus within the University system in 2004 who were also current or former students of the Columbia campus. Affected 22,396

The hacker took the avenue of attacking an unprotected server to gain access to other servers. Once again the servers containing private data could have been Steelcape enabled behind a locked down firewall.

Apr. 18, 2007 Ohio State Univ.
(Columbus, OH) A hacker accessed the names, Social Security numbers, employee ID numbers and birth dates of 14,000 current and former staff members. In a separate incident, the names, Social Security numbers and grades of 3,500 former chemistry students were on class rosters housed on two laptop computers stolen from a professor's home in late February. affected 17,500
UPDATE (06/07/2007) The CIO and IT security department were relieved of their duties at the University from this incident.

Another victim of a poorly executed network security strategy where hackers gained access to a database server from another server.

Apr. 4, 2007 UC San Francisco
(San Francisco, CA)
(415) 353-8100)
isecurity@ucsf.edu
http://oaais.ucsf.edu/notice An unauthorized party may have accesed the personal information including names, Social Security numbers, and bank account numbers of students, faculty, and staff associated with UCSF or UCSF Medical Center over the past two years by compromising the security of a campus server. 46,000

Feb. 10, 2007 Official Indiana State Web site
http://www.IN.gov
(888) 438-8397
Email: securityconcerns@www.IN.gov
A hacker gained access to the State Web site and obtained credit card numbers of individuals who had used the site's online services and gained access to Social Security numbers for 71,000 health-care workers.
UPDATE (3/22/07): Investigators have identified a teen they believe hacked into the IN.gov as a prank. Affected: 5,600 individuals and businesses and 71,000 health-care workers

Feb. 2, 2007 University of Missouri, Research Board Grant Application System
(Columbia, MO) A hacker broke into a UM computer server mid-January and might have accessed personal information, including SSNs, of 1,220 researchers on 4 campuses. The passwords of 2,579 individuals might also have been exposed. 3,799

Jan. 17, 2007 TJ stores (TJX), including TJMaxx, Marshalls, Winners, HomeSense, AJWright, TKMaxx, and possibly Bob's Stores in U.S. & Puerto Rico -- Winners and HomeGoods stores in Canada -- and possibly TKMaxx stores in UK and Ireland
(Framingham, Mass.)
U.S.: Call (866) 484-6978
Canada: (866) 903-1408
U.K. & Ireland: 0800 77 90 15
www.tjx.com

The TJX Companies Inc. experienced an "unauthorized intrusion" into its computer systems that process and store customer transactions including credit card, debit card, check, and merchandise return transactions. It discovered the intrusion mid-December 2006. Transaction data from 2003 as well as mid-May through December 2006 may have been accessed. According to its Web site, TJX is "the leading off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions in the U.S. and worldwide."
UPDATE (2/22/07): TJX said that while it first thought the intrusion took place from May 2006 to January 2007, it now thinks its computer system was also hacked in July 2005 and on "various subsequent dates" that year.
UPDATE (3/21/07): Information stolen from TJX's systems was being used fraudulently in November 2006 in an $8 million gift card scheme, one month before TJX officials said they learned of the breach, according to Florida law enforcement officials.
UPDATE (3/29/07): The company reported in its SEC filing that 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers were hacked, along with 455,000 merchandise return records containing customers' driver's license numbers, Military ID numbers or Social Security numbers.
UPDATE (4/22/07): Initially, TJX said the break-in started seven months before it was discovered. Then, on Feb. 18, the company noted the perpetrators had access to data for 17 months, and apparently began in July 2005.
UPDATE (04/26/07): Three states' banking associations (MA, CT, and ME) filed a class action lawsuit against TJX to recover the costs of damages totaling "tens of millions of dollars" incurred for replacing customers' debit and credit cards.
UPDATE (05/04/07): An article in the WSJ notes that because TJX had an outdated wireless security encryption system, had failed to install firewalls and data encryption on computers using the wireless network, and had not properly install another layer of security software it had bought, thieves were able to access data streaming between hand-held price-checking devices, cash registers and the store's computers. 21 U.S. and Canadian lawsuits
seek damages from the retailer for reissuing compromised cards.
UPDATE (07/06/07) TJX reports they spent approximately $256 million dealing with this data breach.

Affected: 45,700,000 credit and debit card account numbers

455,000 merchandise return records containing customer names and driver's license numbers

Although the hackers first breached the wireless network, if the other compromised servers were Steelcape enabled sitting behind a locked down firewall, then the hackers would not have had access deeper inside the network.