Outsourcing Breach Response Lowers Costs
By Doug Pollack, Chief Marketing Officer for ID Experts
The Ponemon Institute last month released their 5th annual 2009 Annual Study: Cost of Data Breach. This year, the report explored several new areas and came up with some interesting and in some cases surprising conclusions…
Perplexities of Enterprise Privacy Policies
By Rebecca Herold (The Privacy Professor) CIPP, CISSP, CISM, CISA, FLMI
An important consideration with information security incidents is identifying if personally identifiable information - PII - is involved. If it is, then the privacy breach response team needs to be put into action to determine whether or not an actual privacy breach occurred. I’m always interested in hearing the challenges and unique situations they run across as they not only create their plans, but also for how they execute them. Here are three of these situations, often overlooked and not planned for, but experienced by organizations.
On Managing Your Own Health Records
By Doug Pollack, Chief Marketing Officer for ID Experts
Microsoft HealthVault is designed to let us collect, store, and share health information critical to our family’s well-being and Google Health allows us to organize our health information all in one place, gather our medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, and share our information securely with a family member, doctors or caregiver. For now, I probably won’t start trusting my medical history to either Microsoft or Google…
Healthcare Data Breaches Slow To Surface
By Doug Pollack, Chief Marketing Officer for ID Experts
The 2009 ITRC Breach Report had captured numerous healthcare data breaches since the September 23rd effective date for the HITECH Act. So, I’m perplexed as to why there aren’t any data breaches over 500 individuals yet listed by HHS. Surprisingly, there is nothing there.
Smart Grid Privacy Standards Proposed
By Rebecca Herold (The Privacy Professor) CIPP, CISSP, CISM, CISA, FLMI
Access to live energy use data can reveal if people are in the dwelling, what they are doing, where they are in the dwelling, and access to data use profiles that can reveal specific times and locations of electricity use in specific areas of the dwelling can also indicate the types of activities within the dwelling over a period of time. The information revealed is a type of surveillance. We need layers of privacy protections throughout the entire smart grid to effectively address privacy concerns and prevent privacy invasions and breaches.
Fifteen More Smart Grid Privacy Concerns
By Rebecca Herold (The Privacy Professor) CIPP, CISSP, CISM, CISA, FLMI
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have privacy certifications for the organizations that are part of the large smart grid and for the smart meters to help ensure they are appropriately addressing privacy and providing households with informed decision-making capabilities for how the information collected from their homes through these devices are used?
HITECH Act and Protecting Health Privacy
By Doug Pollack, Chief Marketing Officer for ID Experts
These new regulations come at a time when healthcare breaches are on the rise; according to the 2009 ITRC Breach Stats Report healthcare breaches account for over 66 percent of all records breached this year, up from 20 percent in 2008. In fact, some of the largest names in healthcare suffered data breaches.
HIPAA and Video Surveillance of Surgery
By Rebecca Herold (The Privacy Professor) CIPP, CISSP, CISM, CISA, FLMI
A Rhode Island Hospital was fined $150,000 after a surgeon operated on the wrong finger of a patient, and now the hospital must install video cameras in all of its operating rooms. Of course video surveillance will not PREVENT such incidents from happening, but knowing such recordings are being made will likely make surgeons much more careful…
Report: Data Breaches Hike Fraud Risk 400%
By Doug Pollack, Chief Marketing Officer for ID Experts
This report should be heeded by those banks, health care organizations, government agencies, insurance companies and others that we entrust with our social security and checking account numbers, birth dates and mothers’ maiden names, and in some cases our personal health information.
Protecting Your Privacy After You Die
By Rebecca Herold (The Privacy Professor) CIPP, CISSP, CISM, CISA, FLMI
Do surviving relatives have a right to read their deceased son’s, daughter’s, husband’s or wife’s communications with other people whose lives could then subsequently be completely altered as a result? What would your email service providers do with all your messages? Who should make that decision, and when should that decision be made?
