Saturday, July 13, 2013

Lots of information I'm not posting. At first read, it seems that the data from LabMD was given to Homelan Security and stolen from them, but maybe not... Interesting, if confusing, case.
Adam Greenberg reports on two cases where businesses have challenged the FTC’s authority in data security cases. Although Wyndham’s challenge has been discussed in detail on DataBreaches.net (see these posts), I haven’t really described the LabMD case until now.
In the LabMD case, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported last year:


Another case my Computer Security and Forensics students can learn from. Could you call up records documenting the status of software on a card reader you sold in 2006?
Cotton Patch Cafe‘s lawsuit against Micros goes to trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Monday. I had posted some of the background on this case back in July 2011, here. The restaurant sued Micros after it was hacked and customers’ credit card information was stolen. Now Gary Haber reports:
The lawsuit alleges that Micros Systems failed to meet credit card industry standards because its system did not have adequate security to prevent hackers from breaking in and stealing customers’ credit card data. The lawsuit alleges unknown third-parties accessed the system in 2006 and 2007 and stole customers’ credit card numbers.
“The system was not compliant at the time they sold it to us,” Larry Marshall, Cotton Patch Cafe’s president, said in an interview.
Louise Casamento, a Micros Systems spokeswoman, called the allegations in the lawsuit “frivolous.”
Cotton Patch’s lawsuit alleged negligence, gross negligence, negligent misrepresentation, fraud by nondisclosure, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. I’ve uploaded a copy of their second amended complaint and Micros’s response to it.
Micros moved for summary judgement, and the court granted their motion in part, striking the negligence and gross negligence counts. The three remaining counts will be litigated. Judge Marvin J. Garbis’s Memorandum and Order provides background on the case and allegations and refers to forensic findings. Since most of the court filings are under seal, this document may be helpful if you are trying to get up to speed on this case and what some of the forensic investigations revealed – or didn’t reveal.


For my weekly amusement...
The Chronicle reports that not a single student at Colorado State University-Global Campus has signed up for MOOC-for-credit. (Students there can purportedly pay $89 for a proctored exam, “compared with the $1,050 that Colorado State charges for a comparable three-credit course.”) The deluge of students wanting to acquire cheaper credits – is “not happening as quickly as we had hoped,” says Chari Leader Kelley, vice president of LearningCounts.
The New York Times reports that schools that are considering allowing employees to carry concealed weapons are facing higher insurance rates, with some insurance providers threatening to drop coverage altogether. “More than 30 state legislatures introduced bills that permit staff members to carry guns in public or private schools this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.” [Not sure I see the logic here... Bob]
Versal launched its online learning platform this week, one it describes as “an open publishing platform for anyone to create interactive online courses - no coding required.” It’s also launched a foundation to support educators and non-profits with grants ($1,000 to $25,000) to create “forever-free,” openly-licensed courses. “Versal’s killer app is something it calls the ‘gadget’ tool,” reports ReadWrite, which wins for the headline-of-the-week: “Online Learning Is Broken, And Versal Wants To Fix It.” (I thought online learning was going to fix broken brick-and-mortar education, but it’s hard to keep everything straight.)

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