Welcome to the Tuesday Morning News Kick Off post from the ITAC blog. Typically, we do this post every Monday, but since most of us observed the Memorial Day holiday weekend, we we pushing this post back one day. And, as always, there is not shortage of news. While many of us were enjoying the long weekend and taking time to honor those who served our great nation, the news cycle was humming along in full force. Be sure to check out this full post for more identity theft, data breach and cyber security news.

Sony and Epsilon Agree to Testify Before Congress Sony has finally agreed to testify before a Congressional hearing that will be held by Representative Mary Bono Mack, the chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade.

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Sony estimates the massive data breach affecting 100 million PlayStation Network, Qriocity, and Sony Online Entertainment customers have cost $171 million so far.   However, lawsuits and regulatory fines could push that figure much higher.

The money has been spent on providing identity theft protection to affected customers, costs from welcome back programs that offer services for free, customer support costs, network security enhancement costs, legal and consulting costs, as well as lost revenue, Sony said.

Sony stressed that it has not received “any confirmed reports of customer identity theft issues, nor any confirmed misuse of credit cards” from the data breaches.

The company acknowledged that class action lawsuits have been filed against the company and some of its subsidiaries and regulatory inquiries have been initiated. These

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There are various ways in which you can reduce debt. However, debt consolidation is a good way to become reduces debt and debt free. Most of the consumers have unmanageable credit card bills and so credit card bill consolidation is one of the most popular ways to pay off your debts. Bill consolidation lowers the interest rate on your credit card debts and consolidates the several bills into a single debt.

Ways to consolidate credit cards

There are three main ways in which you may be able to consolidate your credit card bills. You can do bill consolidation either through balance transfer or take out a consolidation loan or go to a consolidation company for help.

In balance transfer you consolidate your several bills by transferring the balance from all the high interest credit card of yours to a new credit card offering 0% on balance transfer. Full Article…

The professional services firm BDO recently announced the results of its 2011 BDO RiskFactor Report for Technology, which found that found that data security and breach prevention have become increasing concerns for technology companies relative to last years findings. Full Article…

Any true fan of Star Wars knows that Jar Jart Binks is one of the most despised Star Wars characters of all time. Our readers may recall that Jar Jar Binks first appears in The Phantom Menace as very bumbling and some would say annoying Gungan who set off a wave of almost vitriolic hatred from the true fans.  I think you all get the point:  Jar Jat Binks is not very well liked.  So if someone compares you to Jar Jar Binks, they are basically saying that you are not cool.  Yes, its a somewhat hurtful thing to say.

Well, world-renowned star Ronaldinho experienced this kind of diss, though in the arena of cyber space.  A hacker recently broke into his official web site and defaced it with images of Jar Jar Binks and Osama Bin Laden.  The hacker who claimed responsibility for this breach is a person by the name of Terrorist MC.

While we admit that Ronaldinho may resemble Jar Jar Binks in physical appearance, its not a very nice thing to do. As th

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Six people in California have been charged with defrauding banks out of more than $3 million dollars.

An indictment handed down by a federal grand jury charges the six individuals with 29 felony counts of bank fraud.

The suspects stole the identities of people with good credit scores to establish lines of credit and used the money for personal expenses.

According to the FBI, the group obtained personal information including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit profiles, FICO scores and driver’s license numbers.  They then used this information to complete fraudulent applications for business lines of credit at Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank branches.

The stolen identities also were used to create phony corporate officers of shell corporations that did not exist, the FBI said.

To fool bank employees who made on-site inspections, the defendants created fake offices where they posed as employees to make it look like the corporations were legitimate.

Once the applications were approved, banks deposited money into the accounts, usually in amounts of $100,000.

The defendants liquidated accounts in a few days, making checks payable to themselves. The

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