Posted by Barton Lorimor

* Here is an example of proactively trying to prevent a data breach and public relations nightmare…

A conference next week in Bloomington featuring local election officials and representatives of the Illinois State Police, Department of Homeland Security and the Election Assistance Commission will educate officials on election security, from recognizing and reporting a threat to how hackers can try to access their networks.

Helping to organize the event is six-term Logan County Clerk Sally Turner.

“Most county clerks have no idea that, when they ran for office, that they would have to be an IT director,” she said. “And so, this is helping us get a basic knowledge of what is all this information that is out there, and how do we decipher it all.”

* And then there is the other side of the spectrum…

Families were sent an email Friday evening from CPS’s Office of Access and Enrollment inviting them to submit supplemental applications to selective enrollment schools. Attached at the bottom of the email was a link to a spreadsheet with the private data of over 3,700 students and families.

The link to the private data was active for several hours after CPS noticed and apologized for the breach. The link was eliminated by Saturday morning.