World leaders including Obama suffer data leak
Cyber attacks are not the only risk when handling confidential data; human error can also lead to potential damage and that has been highlighted today. The Guardian reports that an Australian immigration department employee accidentally disclosed personal details of world leaders including President Obama. The information was not made public as such, but was sent to the organisers of the Asian Cup soccer tournament. Personal data such as passport numbers and visa information was included. The agency involved did not deem the risk to be high enough to inform the affected parties.
Radiation leak at New Mexico nuclear facility caused by kitty litter
An investigation by government scientists has concluded that the radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico that occurred last year was caused by a combination of incompatible chemicals. These include the wrong kind of kitty litter which was used to absorb liquids; this reacted inside a barrel of other components leading to it bursting and releasing radioactive materials.
Law firms criticised for keeping quiet about cyber breaches
The legal profession has been criticised in a report for failing to confess to cyber attacks. The internal document from Citigroup’s cyberintelligence center warned that law firms’ websites and networks pose a potential vulnerability as “Due to the reluctance of most law firms to publicly discuss cyberintrusions and the lack of data breach reporting requirements in general in the legal industry, it is not possible to determine whether cyberattacks against law firms are on the rise.” The document was obtained by the New York Times which reports that it suggests that law firms can reasonably be expected to be targeted due to the confidential data they handle. There are calls for law firms to do more to tackle the issue of cyber attacks and some want statutory requirements for them to do so.
Does a musician’s genre affect how soon they die?
Academics seem to thrive on studying hyper-niche topics when writing a thesis and this one certainly seems to prove that. A professor of psychology and music at the University of Sydney has published a study entitled
Music to die for: how genre affects popular musicians’ life expectancy. Dianna Theadora Kenny examined the death of 13,000 musicians to ascertain if there were patterns, specifically if the type of music an individual focused on altered how long they lived. Among her findings were that while murder accounted for 6 per cent of all deaths in the sample, 51.5 per cent hip hop artists and 51 per cent of rappers died that way. Substance abuse featured highly as did transport accidents. Brokers and agents who have musician clients should also note that; metal and punk artists are more likely to die from “accidental” death (which often includes overdoses); folk and jazz musicians are at higher risk of cancer; blues musicians have a tendency towards heart-related deaths; but gospel singers are less likely to commit suicide.
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