A.3 Further aspects of database management

The news articles below cover some of the major risks of malicious actions such as hacking or malware. Myriad examples of these problems exist (and new ones seem to appear every few weeks), but the examples below highlight some of the more famous cases (and the greatest losses).

• Target Expects $148 Million Loss from Data Breach
• Security lapses at Apple and Amazon lead to an epic hack
• McDonald’s customers’ data exposed in a Big Mac hack attack
• Sony fined over 'preventable' PlayStation data hack
• Lost in the post - 25 million at risk after data discs go missing
• Zurich Insurance fined £2.3m over customers' data loss
• Doorstep lender Shopacheck fined £150,000 for data loss
• Home Depot: Card breach put 56M cards at risk

The news articles below cover some examples of (in)famous errors in databases, from relatively minor to major errors in voting systems.

• French phone bill waived after 12qn-euro blunder
• Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List
• Dead girl given truancy warning
• Outrage at 500,000 DNA database mistakes
• Florida’s flawed “voter-cleansing” program

This videos provides an introduction into data mining, explaining why analysis of big data is necessary and how can we go about finding hidden patterns in large volumes of data. The end of the video includes some good examples of data analysis in the medical field, and the difficulties of finding correlation and causation with the data sets.

This video from the ACLU takes a very simple task - ordering a pizza on the telephone - and highlights how data mining could it into a privacy nightmare. By carefully watching the screen as well as listening to the audio, many realistic examples of potentially privacy-breaching data matching spring up. The video was created by the ACLU a few years ago, but the issues it represents are still very relevant.