Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Breach numbers

I just got a response from North Carolina to my freedom of information request, asking for records pertaining to security breaches resulting in the exposure of personal information. North Carolina requires that such breaches be reported centrally.
The data were sent in printed form, in a table obviously derived from a spreadsheet. I hope to obtain that spreadsheet when I call tomorrow, but for now, here’s what I have:
The date range is December 19, 2005 through July 21, 2006.
There are 41 incidents, totaling 231,373 North Carolina records.
By comparison, New York provided me with information on 29 incidents from December 15, 2005 through approximately March 10, 2006, exposing 217,795 New York records.
Let’s have some fun, bearing in mind that this isn’t intended as scholarship, and I didn’t check my figures:
Incidents per day (NY/NC): .34/.19
Exposed records per day (NY/NC): 2562/1081
Now if we normalize that last, by taking into account state population:
2562/(1081*2.3) = 1.03
Now that is a cool result (even if it is a coincidence!) ;^)
[Updated 8/22 to clarify what kind of info this is. Thanks, Ian!]

2 comments on "Breach numbers"

  • Iang says:

    Chris, I appreciate your concern for privacy 🙂 but could you tell us a little more about what the incidents refer to?

  • Chris says:

    This is about security breaches that involve the release of personal information. I’ll clarify the posting.

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