When an employer is responding to a breach of their employees’ personal information, one of the last things they may think about is whether the value of the credit monitoring or other identity protection services they make available to affected employees should be considered taxable to the employees and reported as such. In Announcement 2015-22
Identity Theft
Nevada Updated Its Definition of Personal Information, Have You?
When businesses set out to safeguard “personal information,” a fundamental consideration is what that term means. Likewise, when negotiating a third-party vendor agreement, it typically is not enough to rely on the standard definition for “confidential information.” Recently, Nevada and other states have updated their definitions of personal information in connection data breaches notification and…
State Attorneys General Tell Congress – Don’t Preempt Our Breach Notification Laws!
In the wake of recent, large-scale data breaches, one being the breach at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) affecting millions of federal employees, a number of bills have been battling their way through Congress to address breach notification and data security requirements at the federal level. There has been an ongoing pattern for years…
Courts Restrict Ability of Customers and Employees to Sue Companies Following a Data Breach, But Risks of Other Liabilities Remain
Among the multitude of unpleasant issues facing a company whose network has been breached is potential liability to customers and employees whose personal information has been compromised. However, recent district court decisions from around the country continue to limit the opportunity of those customers and employees to have their day in court. Specifically, these cases…
Connecticut Enacts SB 949 Requiring One Year of Free Identity Theft Protection Services For Certain Data Breaches
Senate Bill 949 is now law in Connecticut, after being signed by Governor Malloy on June 11. As we reported, this law amends the state’s current breach notification mandate to require that for breaches of certain personal information covered business must provide one year of free identity-theft protection for affected persons. So, beginning October…
Connecticut May Require Businesses to Offer One Year of Identity Theft Protection Services Following a Data Breach, Joining Other States in Strengthening Notification Laws
Following a string of states across the country that have strengthened their data breach notification laws in recent months, Connecticut is about to amend its law to require, among other things, that businesses provide one year of identity-theft protection for persons affected by the breach. Many businesses already extend such services to breach victims, but,…
Will Your Cyber/Breach Insurance Be There When You Need It?
The answer to this question may depend on the actions that the insured takes when it applies for coverage and during the period the policy is in force. The demand for cyberinsurance that is intended to cover exposures from data breaches, among other things, has exploded in recent years, reports The Hill. This is…
Next Step in U.S. Postal Service Breach – NLRB Sues Postal Service
As discussed in an earlier post, shortly after the United States Postal Service reported a data breach potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of employees, the American Postal Workers Union filed an unfair labor practice with the National Labor Relations Board alleging the Postal Service should have bargained with the union over the impact and…
The Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2015
On March 25, 2015, the United States House of Representative, Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade approved draft legislation which would replace state data breach notification laws with a national standard. This draft legislation comes on the heels of the President’s call for a national data breach notification law. The proposed…
Email Autofill Error Exposes Personal Information of G20 World Leaders
With breaches caused by payment card thieves and hackers dominating the news, it is easy for mid-sized and small companies to think that data breaches are unfortunate events that affect only large companies. Not only is this sentiment misguided, but in relative terms the information contained in exposed emails can cause far more damage to …