Breach

The body charged with managing and promoting the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) announced today it will soon administer another set of merchant guidelines involving secure payment systems.

Clothing retailer Gap Inc. revealed that a laptop containing the Social Security numbers of 800,000 job applicants was stolen from a third-party vendor. The laptop contained info of job applicants who applied to the company's Old Navy, Banana Republic, Gap and Outlet stores. The vendor, not identified by Gap, contacted law enforcement authorities about the breach. The data was not encrypted.

Visa has doled out some $880,000 in fines to a Cincinnati-based acquiring bank that TJX contracted with to process most of its credit card transactions.

Anti-virus provider Trend Micro today announced the acquisition of Provilla, a data-loss prevention vendor.

A group of New England banking associations contended in a court filing Tuesday that hackers stole 94 million account numbers when they infiltrated the databases of clothing retailer TJX, the Boston Globe reported today.

A legion of data exposures have occurred over the past year, with many affected companies not only being forced to address customer and investor concerns, but also pay fines and adhere to prolonged sets of requirements administered by the Federal Trade Commission. So just how is news of such breaches, exposures and possible thefts affecting the way organizations -- large and small -- focus on information security plans?

Gary McKinnon, accused of hacking into U.S. government computers, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, can protest his extradition to America in Britain's highest court, a three-judge panel ruled today.