BAN finds trouble in its own backyard

the Seattle-based group that manages the e-Stewards natural philosophy usage certification program, has revoked that certification for Total Reclaim, saying the city firm “was known by BAN’s e-Trash Transparency Project (an electronic trailing program) to have exported mercury-containing liquid crystal display (liquid crystal display) monitors to metropolis.”

BAN has posted many documents regarding the Total Reclaim state of affairs to its web site, including associate “evidentiary report” and a statement from Total Reclaim’s Craig Lorch and Jeff Zirkle apologizing for the lapses in certification protocol.

“We are terribly sorry that we have a tendency to have disillusioned our business, our customers, our employees and all those that have believed in North American country,” write the duo. Lorch and Zirkle also write, “Economic challenges never excuse wrong behavior. The reality, though, is that squeezed by plummeting commodity prices; increasing labor costs; long, fixed-price contracts; and, especially, a dramatically increasing volume of flat-screen devices, we created a short-run business call to export materials to unsupported process facilities in Hong Kong.”

As part of its e-Trash Transparency Project, BAN says it “placed 200 tiny GPS-based trailing devices into recent printers and monitors and delivered them to Goodwill [Industries] and to numerous recyclers round the country.”

Two caterpillar-tracked devices went from Total Reclaim’s possession to the New Territories of Hong Kong, where units ar disassembled in non-e-Stewards-certified facilities.

A May 9, 2016, BAN news release on the e-Trash Transparency Project additionally scrutinizes the usage partnership between laptop maker holler INC. and Goodwill Industries. BAN says 46 of the two hundred tracker-planted electronic devices were delivered to Goodwill Industries stores within the us which “seven of those later reported their whereabouts in the Asian countries of Asian country, Taiwan and China (mainland and Hong Kong). Six of these were a part of Dell INC.’s Reconnect partnership with Goodwill.”

Says BAN Executive Director Jim Puckett, “Goodwill and Dell have had robust reputations for social and environmental responsibility. Our findings, however, shake the foundations of that public trust and cry for the implementation of immediate reform when it involves e-waste management.”

PDPC takes action against 11 firms for data privacy breaches

The Personal Data Protection Commission fined karaoke chain K Box Entertainment S$50,000 for not having sufficient security measures during the 2014 database breach.

PDPC imposed a financial penalty of S$50,000 on karaoke chain, K Box Entertainment Group, for not having sufficient security measures to protect the personal data of 317,000 members. Details such as their contact number, email address, NRIC number and date of birth were leaked on a publicly accessible website after the company’s database was hacked.

The PDPC found that K Box did not update security patches to ensure its IT system security was sufficiently robust and it did not have a Data Protection Officer to develop or implement data protection policies. There was also weak control of access to personal data.

A financial penalty of S$10,000 was also imposed on the IT vendor in charge of K Box’s content management system, Finantech Holdings, for failing to implement proper and adequate protective measures for the personal data in the system it had built and managed for K Box, PDPC said. Continue reading “PDPC takes action against 11 firms for data privacy breaches”

Personal data of 300,000 K Box Singapore clients surfaces online

SINGAPORE – The personal data of over 300,000 customers of karaoke chain K Box Singapore have been posted online.

At least five customers have confirmed with The Straits Times that the leaked database contains their names, addresses and mobile phone and identity card numbers, although some information is outdated. Details of celebrities who are members of the karaoke chain also appear to have been posted. K Box membership numbers and loyalty points earned were also exposed.

The leak of K Box’s membership database is being investigated by privacy watchdog, the Personal Data Protection Commission, which said it is “concerned about the scale” of the alleged breach.

Organisations must take “reasonable measures” to protect personal data in their possession, said the commission, citing privacy laws which came into force on July 2. Continue reading “Personal data of 300,000 K Box Singapore clients surfaces online”

End user data backup policy

Data without an associated backup is only as reliable as the system upon which it is stored – and every system has a finite life span or may be susceptible to malware or hacking efforts. Ransomware applications, which infect systems then encrypt data and demand anonymous payment in Bitcoin, are now a way of life, forcing users to choose between losing data or succumbing to extortion.

When end users utilize systems – whether workstations, laptop or mobile devices – to access, work on and store company data, the loss or failure of those devices can put data at risk. Productivity, operations and company reputation can be placed in jeopardy as well. In order to protect itself, its employees and its business activities, every organization should make regular backups of all end user data stored on its systems, whether company-provided or employee-owned.

Top 10 Free Data Destruction Software Programs

Data destruction package, generally referred to as knowledge cleanup package, disk wipe package, or drive implement package, may be a software-based methodology of fully erasing the information from a tough drive.

When you delete files then empty the Recycle Bin, you do not truly data erase, you only delete the respect to it that the software system cannot notice it. All the information continues to be there and, unless it’s overwritten, are often simply recovered victimisation file recovery package.

Data destruction package, however, actually will erase the information. every data destruction program utilizes one or a lot of data cleanup ways which will for good write the knowledge on the drive. Continue reading “Top 10 Free Data Destruction Software Programs”