In the US, many organizations anxiously awaiting assistance under the CARES Act are becoming the targets of cyberattackers looking to feed off of the massive relief being provided by the US treasury. Yesterday, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre … Continue Reading
Earlier this month, California Attorney General (“AG”) Xavier Becerra sent a letter to several members of U.S. Congress, providing an update on the implementation of the newly effective California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and urging Congress not to enact a federal law that would preempt the CCPA and other state consumer privacy measures. Instead, AG … Continue Reading
Over the past few months, businesses across the country have been focused on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which dramatically expands privacy rights for California residents and provides a strong incentive for businesses to implement reasonable safeguards to protect personal information. That focus is turning back east as the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic … Continue Reading
As announcements relaying the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) continue daily, governmental agencies at all levels are offering information and guidance, and businesses are scrambling to prepare and protect their employees and customers. As part of a larger group in my firm helping to synthesize all this information, there is an aspect of responding to COVID-19 … Continue Reading
As reported by Bloomberg Law, data breach class action litigation has begun under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Filed in the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, a putative class action lawsuit against Hanna Andersson, LLC and its ecommerce platform provider, Salesforce.com, alleges negligence and a failure to maintain reasonable safeguards, among other … Continue Reading
In response to trends, heightened public awareness, and a string of large-scale data breaches, states continue to enhance their data breach notification laws. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed into law an amendment to the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), SB 1624, effective January 1, 2020. PIPA will now require that most “data collectors,” which includes … Continue Reading
The Georgia Supreme Court may weigh in on the hot issue plaguing data breach class action litigation across the nation, must a data breach victim suffer actual financial loss to recover damages, or is the threat of future harm enough? On August 20, the Georgia Supreme Court heard arguments in a class action suit stemming … Continue Reading
A new school year is upon us and some students are already back at school. Upon their return, many students may experience new technologies and equipment rolled out by their schools districts, such as online education resources, district-provided equipment, etc. to enhance the education they provide and improve district administration. However, a recent report, “The State … Continue Reading
On Thursday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (SHIELD Act), sponsored by Senator Kevin Thomas and Assemblymember Michael DenDekker. The SHIELD Act, which amends the State’s current data breach notification law, imposes more expansive data security and data breach notification requirements on companies, in … Continue Reading
Possibly adding to the list of states that have updated their privacy and breach notification laws this year, the Illinois legislature passed Senate Bill 1624 which would update the state’s current breach notification law to require most “data collectors,” which includes entities that, for any purpose, handle, collect, disseminate, or otherwise deal with nonpublic personal information, to notify … Continue Reading
Employers, you are not out of the CCPA woods yet. If you have been tracking the proposed amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), you know that businesses and stakeholders have been clamoring to shape the new sweeping law in a number of ways. We reported earlier this year on some of the potential … Continue Reading
Verizon recently published its 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report. This report is the 12th edition and contains an analysis of 41,686 security incidents with 2,013 confirmed breaches from 73 sources, including public and private entities. Included among its many findings, the report found high-level executives are twelve times more likely to be the target of … Continue Reading
As we noted last month, Washington’s efforts to follow California’s lead in passing its own GDPR-like law have stalled after the bill failed to make its way through the state’s House of Representatives—despite overwhelming approval in the Senate (where it passed 46-1). That bill’s sponsor has promised to revisit the issue during the 2020 legislative … Continue Reading
On May 10, Governor Phil Murphy signed into law P.L.2019, c.95. an amendment enhancing New Jersey’s data breach notification law by expanding the definition of personal information, and updating notification requirements. As we previously reported, the amendment was unanimously approved by the New Jersey General Assembly and Senate in late February. New Jersey’s data breach notification law … Continue Reading
A security lapse has exposed the data of at least 13.7 million user records of the high-end job recruitment site, Ladders. The company left a cloud-hosted search database exposed without a password. Ladders took the database offline less than an hour after the news website TechCrunch alerted the company after learning about the potential breach … Continue Reading
The much-anticipated amendment to North Carolina’s data breach notification law that we reported on earlier this year (see here) has finally been introduced to the state’s General Assembly. The bill entitled, an Act Amending the Identity Theft Protection Act, House Bill DRH40393-LR10C, is primarily sponsored by State Representatives Jason Saine (R), Brenden H. Jones (R), … Continue Reading
It was looking like Washington state would be the first state to follow the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), with a GDPR-like law of its own. That effort has stalled, perhaps temporarily. However, both Washington’s House and Senate voted unanimously to send HB 1071 to Gov. Jay Inslee, which would substantially expand the state’s current … Continue Reading
Small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) continue to be targeted by ransomware, phishing and other cyberattacks; the consequences of which could be devastating. Those consequences include putting SMEs out of business, which is unfortunately the case for one small medical practice in Battle Creek, Michigan, as reported by HIPAAJournal. The reality is that the effects of these attacks … Continue Reading
UPDATE: The changes to the Massachusetts data breach notification law described below are now in effect. Thus, if you have discovered a data incident involving the personal information of Massachusetts residents you will want to review these changes carefully – they are significant and the Commonwealth is intent on educating the public about them. Because we have coached … Continue Reading
A few weeks back a company’s watch list containing nearly 2.5 million individuals and entities considered “high-risk” for its clients was mistakenly leaked to the public. A “high-risk” entity in this circumstance was one potentially linked to organized crime or terrorism. The leak resulted from an unsecured and incorrectly configured company database. Typically in the … Continue Reading
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition for a writ of certiorari by Zappos requesting the Court to review a Ninth Circuit Court decision which allowed customers affected by a data breach to proceed with a lawsuit on grounds of vulnerability to fraud and identity theft. The ruling stems from a 2012 breach that … Continue Reading
Add Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine’s recent data security legislative proposal – the Security Breach Protection Amendment Act of 2019 – to the growing list of states and jurisdictions across the country seeking to strengthen privacy and security protections around personal information. Proposed in response to major data breaches, a frequent catalyst to stronger … Continue Reading
The Garden State has been updating its data privacy and security laws and you may be wondering why. On October 28, 2018, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and the New Jersey State Police the New Jersey announced statistics on the effects of data breaches in 2017 on New Jersey residents. Based on that report, here … Continue Reading
Since the start of 2019, New Jersey has shown it is on the forefront of consumer privacy and security law. Last week we reported on Assembly Bill 3245 (AB 3245) that would enhance the state’s data breach notification requirements. In short, if signed, AB 3245, would require businesses to notify consumers of online account security … Continue Reading
