In 2009, the FBI began investigating a breach of confidential records from the State of Virginia's Prescription Monitoring Program. Hackers had allegedly broken into the system, stolen 8.3 million patient records and were demanding a $10 million ransom to return the data. 1 Earlier that year, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration had reported a similar incident wherein one of its systems had been hacked into, compromising the personal information of 45,000 employees.
While these are just two of the many data breaches that occurred in 2009, they are stern reminders that information security is facing increasingly powerful and frequent attacks ranging from malicious software to cyber espionage to internal fraud. Most of these attacks are sophisticated, aggressive, well-funded, and if successful, can cause immense harm to organizational assets and individuals, not to mention national and economic security.
