The Data Breach Thread...

Been a few of these lately so time for its own thread. Below is my latest "Cluster", and I'm sure we'd all be interested in hearing yours, especially when large groups like state governments, health care systems, *etc. *are involved.

The early morning news on November 10 reported that EVERYONE in Maine, all 1.4 million of us, was involved in a massive data breach at the state government level. The showed website for everyone to check if there were involved.

Nothing like news like that to jolt you awake. Went to the website and read up to discover that the breach occurred back in MAY when the state was migrating almost the entirety of its data to another system!! I got major relief checking a list of government agencies impacted and the associated odds of being impacted.

Turns out that the most "service" agencies like welfare, Medicaid, *etc.* were the ones showing >99% impacted, and the only one that I could have been impacted with, DMV, reported a less than 1% chance. Big sigh of relief, but should I trust that government report, the same organization that responsible for the data breach? NFW!! Of course, the ME Gov was profusely apologetic and promised 2 years of free credit monitoring if impacted. Wonderful, now we're all paying extra tax dollars for them to clean up their mess...

It was Friday, the last day of the work week for government agencies, and I wanted to verify that we was safe so I called the provided number, hearing that "There was an unusually high volume of calls", no shit Sherlock, and "The wait time was 5 minutes", yeah right!

20 minutes on hold later, still getting that "We're working hard to answer you call, please continue to hold" f-ing message, I realized it was time to head down to Boston for an appointment, so we got in the car and continued to hear the horrible on hold music on our drive. FINALLY, 20 minutes later, a full 40 minutes after the call started, there was a human voice on the phone. As we provided names and addresses I could hear the representative actually turning pages!!! Yes, she checked our names out on paper, not a computer screen??!!! Guess it's safer than another data breach? Regardless, we were pronounced as safe, validating the initial <1% chance.

I guess all's well that ends well, but just going public with a MASSIVE May, 2023 Data Breach in November, especially when it's obvious that most of the impacted folks are the least ready to react or even know they were impacted, is just unconscionable!!

Rant over, feel free to add yours and get it off your chest...