Emma Woollacott reports: British businesses could face lower fines if they proactively report data breaches, thanks to an agreement between the UK’s data protection regulator and cybersecurity agency. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) say they plan to encourage engagement with the NCSC in the event of a breach, and allow meaningful…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Facebook Messenger phishing wave targets 100K business accounts per week
Bill Toulas reports: Hackers use a massive network of fake and compromised Facebook accounts to send out millions of Messenger phishing messages to target Facebook business accounts with password-stealing malware. The attackers trick the targets into downloading a RAR/ZIP archive containing a downloader for an evasive Python-based stealer that grabs cookies and passwords stored in…
Hospital Sisters Health System’s CFO exits as it continues to handle ‘cybersecurity incident’
On August 29, DataBreaches reported that Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS) and Prevea Health appeared to have been the victims of a ransomware attack. As of today, the notice on Prevea Health states, “HSHS and Prevea are experiencing a systemwide outage of clinical and administrative applications.” Prevea continues to describe it as a temporary outage….
California Privacy Protection Agency publishes new draft regulations addressing AI, risk assessments, cyber audits
Philip N. Yannella, Gregory P. Szewczyk, and Timothy Dickens of Ballard Spahr write: The California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) recently published two new sets of draft regulations addressing a range of cutting-edge data protection issues. Although the CPPA has not officially started the formal rulemaking process, the Draft Cybersecurity Audit Regulations and the Draft Risk Assessment Regulations will serve…
HHS Office for Civil Rights Settles with L.A. Care Health Plan Over Potential HIPAA Security Rule Violations
LA Care, the largest publicly operated health plan in the country paid $1,300,000 to settle Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a settlement of potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Rules with LA Care, the nation’s largest publicly operated health plan that…
An inexcusable gap from breach to notification, or an excusable one?
Some state and federal laws provide specific timeframes by which breached entities must provide notice to regulators and to those affected by a data breach. Unfortunately, loopholes abound, as we seen in statutory language such as Minnesota’s breach notification law, where for timing of notification, it says: “The disclosure must be made in the most…