The latest data breach in the HSE has resulted in the medical records of up to 1,500 individuals being compromised.

It is understood that a private IT contractor who was supervised by a HSE staff member downloaded the records on to an unencrypted USB Key and brought the device home that night. He then later emailed the records to a mistyped email address.

An internal investigation within the HSE is said to be underway however the patients whose information has been compromised have not been informed.

It has been reported that cyber criminals are creating as many as 57000 websites every week in a bid to obtain data from unsuspecting people. Many of these websites look and appear to be exactly like those websites you regularly use such as Visa, Amazon, Ebay, Paypal etc.

Phishing

The bogus websites are often made to look exactly like those of legitimate bank, auction, or shopping websites. The threat arises when users are unable to determine the authenticity of the websites when they click into them through search engines or email messages. While Search Engines and various security software companies do try to thwart the efforts of the hackers it can’t eliminate all the risks. This is why users need to be extremely vigilant when logging onto these websites.

According to Panda Labs 2/3 of these bogus websites related to banking websites.  ”Given the proliferation of this technique, we advise consumers to visit banking sites or online stores by typing in the address in the browser directly rather than using search engines or links in an email,” Corrons said.

While typing in the address of the website will mitigate some attacks it does not ensure complete safety said Alan O’Regan from Secured.IE. Some of these attacks hijack DNS requests so even though you have typed the correct website into the address bar you may still end up being diverted off to a bogus website.