Jenna Greene reports: The Federal Trade Commission this week was sued for refusing to turn over information about how the agency decides to bring data security cases. The Freedom of Information Act suit by Philip Reitinger, a former Department of Homeland Security official who is now president of a cybersecurity company, comes as the FTC defends…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Wetware: The Major Data Security Threat You’ve Never Heard Of
Adam Levin reports: For the first time, according to a recent study, criminal and state-sponsored hacks have surpassed human error as the leading cause of health care data breaches, and it could be costing the industry as much as $6 billion. With an average organization cost of $2.1 million per breach, the results of the…
The CFAA meets the “cannibal cop” in the Second Circuit — and maybe beyond
Orin Kerr writes: The Second Circuit held oral argument Tuesday in United States v. Valle, widely known as the “Cannibal Cop” case. There was a ton of media attention about this case at trial, including the trial judge’s decision to overturn the jury verdict for conspiracy to commit kidnapping on the ground that it was all a fantasy. HBO has already…
OIG identifies big HHS security shortfalls
Erin McCann reports: The IT infrastructure office at the Department of Health and Human Services has some serious security problems. This after the office received a less than satisfactory security report card from the Office of Inspector General this week. After reviewing the security controls at HHS’ Office of Information Technology Infrastructure and Operations, or…
FTC passes on presenting a rebuttal witness in FTC v. LabMD (Updated and Corrected)
The FTC will not be presenting any witness to rebut sensational testimony given by former Tiversa employee Richard (“Rick”) Wallace last week in the FTC’s data security enforcement case against LabMD. Robert Boback, CEO of Tiversa, who was accused of essentially being a fraudster and/or extortionist by his former employee, had this to say when…
Estimated cost of breaches in 2020 is… staggering
According to InfoTechLead, Juniper Research’s figures put the global cost of data breaches at $2.1 trillion by 2019, and the average cost of a data breach at $150 million by 2020. Gulp.