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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Legal, School Safety, Workplace Violence

Could stabbing have been prevented? A recent article discussing the brutal stabbing of a UCLA student in chemistry lab has raised difficult questions asking why disturbed students are allowed to remain at school despite red flags and obvious warning signs.  Since Virginia Tech, campuses across the Nation have been working to identify troubled students and potential warning signs of mental illness, violence or other problems.  However, identifying red flags and connecting the dots across multiple people (students, faculty, dorm advisors, mental health, law enforcement, etc.) can be extremely difficult and seemingly very complex.  Students and faculty members said that the UCLA attacker had exhibited erraticRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Human Resources, Incident Reporting, Information Privacy, Information Security, Legal, Risk Management

Did you see the story today involving CalOptima (a Medicaid managed care plan) who has notified 68,000 of their members of a potential loss of past medical claims information?  According to CalOptima, the information includes substantial identifying information, such as member names, home addresses, dates of birth, medical procedure codes, diagnosis codes and member identification numbers and even some Social Security numbers. Do you wonder how many other organizations are sending personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) in packages through parcel carriers? Do you wonder how many organizations are sending YOUR personal information through the mail? This story is one of hundredsRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Incident Reporting, School Safety, Workplace Violence

I recently caught a Dr. Phil segment focusing on bullying in schools…yes, I was watching Dr. Phil! Bullying in schools is a serious problem that has escalated to include verbal and cyber harassment, physical beatings, social humiliation and death threats.  In several cases, the bullying victims have even resorted to suicide to escape the tormenting of their peers.    On the show, Dr. Phil offered insight and advice on bullying targeted at tween girls.   Dr. Phil’s web site offers suggestions on how to launch an anti-bullying campaign with pledges for students, parents, teachers and faculty.  An excerpt from the Student Pledge is below: We theRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Emergency Management, Human Resources, Incident Reporting, Information Privacy, Information Security, School Safety

Please take a moment to consider how these Lessons Learned could be implemented by managers within your organization to avoid expensive and embarrassing situations… FBI Investigating Mystery Laptops Sent to Governors The FBI is investigating five laptop computers sent anonymously to West Virginia Governor Joe Mahchin a few weeks ago, as well as laptops mysteriously ordered for officials in 10 other states.  Officials are worried the laptops may contain malicious software that would be a large risk if connected to government networks. Would your employees plug in a new laptop to your organization’s networks? Bernanke Falls Victim to Identity Theft Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke wasRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Information Privacy, Information Security, Legal, Regulatory Compliance, Workplace Violence

Lessons Learned Review…Keeping You Out of the Headlines and out of this blog… Please take a moment to consider how these Lessons Learned could be implemented by managers within your organization to avoid expensive and embarrassing situations… DDoS Attacks On Twitter, Facebook Result Of Massive Attack On One Person A pro-Georgian blogger called “Cyxymu” was apparently the intended target of the massive DDoS attack that knocked down Twitter and caused major slowdowns on Facebook and LiveJournal.  A botnet blasted waves of traffic at the blogger’s accounts on the sites simultaneously. File Sharing Banned on Government Networks  Rep. Edolphus Towns introduced a bill to ban file-sharingRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Information Privacy, Information Security, School Safety

Keeping You Out of the Headlines and out of this blog… Please take a moment to consider how these Lessons Learned could be implemented by managers within your organization to avoid expensive and embarrassing situations… Secret Service Information Revealed in P2P Data Leak On July 29th, it was revealed that files including information about a Secret Service safe house for the President’s family, details regarding the Pentagon’s network infrastructure, and specific details about every nuclear facility in the US were found on the LimWire file-sharing network.  As a result, a bill has been introduced that would ban P2P sharing on all government computers and networks. Read More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Risk Management

You may have seen the scary story reporting investigators were able to carry liquid bomb-making materials past security at 10 federal building in 10 cities. Members of Congress blasted “disturbing” and “outrageous” security failures in the nation’s federal buildings.  According to the article, Sen. Joe Leiberman blamed the Federal Protective Service Security for failing to provide adequate security and proper training to its 13,000 security guards during a hearing earlier this week on Capitol Hill. The GAO report found that he Federal Protective Service is not doing enough to make sure it’s 13,000 guards are qualified and trained for their jobs – and doing whatRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Incident Reporting, Information Privacy, Information Security, Regulatory Compliance

Step 8 of President Obama’s 10-point action plan is: Prepare a cybersecurity incident response plan; initiate a dialog to enhance public-private partnerships with an eye toward streamlining, aligning, and providing resources to optimize their contribution and engagement. Keywords in Step 8 include: Prepare, Initiate, Dialog, Partnership, Streamlining, Aligning, Optimize. Preparing an incident response plan is a great idea and can play a critical role in the success of a cybersecurity action plan, however a lot organizations have incident response plans that are not producing much if any feedback.   Why are traditional response plans not working? Problems with traditional incident response plans lack anonymity on theRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Business Continuity, Incident Reporting, Information Privacy, Information Security, Legal

In 2007 the Swedish Bank, Nordea was stung for $1.1 million, in the “biggest ever” online bank heist.  250 bank customers were affected by the fraud after falling victim to phishing e-mails.  The e-mail contained a trojan horse that redirected customers to a false home page where they entered important login information.  Most of the customers affected had not been running antivirus applications on their computers. The bank covered the attacks and refunded all the affected customers. In 2009 Credit Union Customers received text messages notifying them that their debit cards had been inactivated.  The message gave a number to call to reactivate the cardRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Incident Reporting, Information Privacy, Information Security, Legal, Regulatory Compliance

The “octuplet mom” story not only created a media frenzy at Kaiser Permanente’s Bellflower hospital , the mom and her eight new born babies also created multiple lessons learned opportunities for every hospital that was paying attention. The lessons learned started in January when the eight new babies were born and making sure hospital personnel were prepared to handle the media frenzy and what they could say and not say and what actions were acceptable and unacceptable.  Does your organization have policies and procedures in place to handle a media frenzy? Then in March, Kaiser Permanente’s Bellflower hospital revealed that 15 employees lost their jobsRead More →