On Thursday, California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced heightened enforcement concerning data breaches, reports USAToday. AG Harris’ office also issued a Guide that provides recommendations to California businesses, particularly small businesses, to help them protect against and respond to the increasing threat of malware, data breaches and other cyber risks.

The circumstances are certainly

A significant percentage of “recycled” computers were found to still contain personal information, according to a study conducted by the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID). As reported in e-Place Solutions, the NAID-ANZ Secondhand Hard Drive Study, found that “15 of 52 hard drives randomly purchased contained highly confidential personal information.”

Smartphone privacy and security concerns continue to weigh on businesses, particularly for companies in certain industries such as healthcare, and for those that have or are thinking of moving to a “bring your own device” (BYOD) model. Promoters of the “Blackphone,” according to a Reuters report, hope that their version of Google’s Android

After years of identity theft holding the top spot for crimes reported to the Federal Trade Commission, and following recent reports of massive data breaches, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urged Congress today to enact a national law setting a uniform standard for notifying individuals regarding breaches involving their personal information, according to a report

Ricardo Rivera Cardona of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration, intending to send a message by imposing the largest penalty to date ($6.8 million) arising out of a breach of protected health information under HIPAA, as reported by Infomation Security Media Group, is quoted as saying:

We are sending a message that we are

A study (registration required) by two data security firms, Norse in Silicon Valley and SANS, discussed in a recent L.A. Times article, confirms the concerns raised by the FDA and others about increased use of internet-connected medical devices by healthcare providers and the corresponding increase in the information systems of those providers being attacked,

Written by Jeffrey M. Schlossberg

When does a medical clinic’s employee’s unauthorized texting of patient confidential health information result in liability to the clinic? The answer; it depends.

In Doe v. Guthrie Clinic, Ltd., the Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a patient’s claim against a medical corporation for alleged breach of fiduciary duty

DPD

In honor of National Data Privacy Day, we provide the following “Top 14 for 2014.”  While the list is by no means exhaustive, it does provide critical areas businesses will need to consider in 2014.

  1. Location Based Tracking.  As the utilization of GPS enable devices becomes more and more prevalent, employers are often faced

A report issued by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) concludes that the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) did not meet all of its federal requirements for oversight and enforcement of the HIPAA Security Rule. While the report noted OCR met some of these requirements, it also found that:

Privacy and data security issues and concerns do not stop at the water’s edge. Companies needing to share personal information, even when the sharing will take place inside the same “company,” frequently run into challenges when that sharing takes place across national borders. In some ways, the obstacles created by the matrix of federal and