On May 24, 2019, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law Senate Bill 684, which requires vendors, service providers and other entities that maintain or possess consumers’ personal information to notify consumers of a security breach.
Continue reading “Oregon Amends Data Breach Notification Law to Apply to Vendors”
Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiaries (MIE) and the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS-OCR) entered into a $100,000 settlement and two-year corrective action plan to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Continue reading “Business Associate Failed to Safeguard 3.5 Million Patients’ Medical Records”
Two recent reports reflect that cyberattacks and resulting data breaches continue to threaten U.S. companies and public entities. The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report (April 23, 2019), compiled from a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. cybersecurity professionals at private companies and public-sector entities with 50 to 1,000+ employees, found that 53% of firms reported at least one cyberattack – up from 38% in 2018. Interestingly, only 11% of U.S. firms qualified as experts based on their cybersecurity preparedness and responses – down from 26% in last year’s survey; 16% of firms ranked as intermediate, and the remaining 73% ranked as novice. These statistics reflect a continuing need for public- and private-sector emphasis on cybersecurity preparedness and incident response.
Continue reading “As Cyberattacks Rise, U.S. Business Readiness Falls”
Two of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) most recent data security settlements include new requirements that go beyond previous data security settlements. The new provisions (1) require that a senior corporate officer provide to the FTC annual certifications of compliance and (2) specifically prohibit making misrepresentations to the third parties conducting required assessments. A statement accompanying these settlements noted that the FTC has instructed staff to examine whether its privacy and data security orders could be strengthened and improved.
Continue reading “New Requirements for FTC Data Security Settlements”
On April 22, 2019, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (“IC3”) released its Internet Crime Report (the “Report”) for 2018. IC3 issues the Report annually as a means to highlight data and identify key trends about Internet crimes.
The Sedona Conference® has released the Final Version of its Commentary on Information Governance, Second Edition (April 2019). The Second Edition of this Commentary again sets out 11 principles of information governance that provide a strategic framework for senior management to make decisions with respect to all information within an enterprise. However, the latest Commentary has been revised to incorporate changes and advances in technology and law, including on privacy, that have occurred over the past four years, and in particular in an expanded set of footnotes it includes updated references to publications of The Sedona Conference that have been issued in the intervening years since 2014.
