The NYS Department of State got a clean bill of health from the state’s Office of the State Comptroller in an audit of their disposal of electronic devices containing personal, private, and sensitive information. The report was issued May 13: Department of State Disposal of Electronic Devices (Issued 05/13/13) Purpose To determine if electronic devices being surplused…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Releases Report on Data Breaches Reported to State in 2012
I love it when states publicly post the data breach notifications they receive, but California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris just raised the bar for other states by actually analyzing and reporting on the breaches involving California residents. From California’s Attorney her press release: Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today released the first report detailing the…
What do consumers expect in the way of data security and privacy protections when they sign up for a premium subscription service?
What do consumers expect in the way of data security and privacy protections when they sign up for a premium subscription service? I was reading up on the class action lawsuit against LinkedIn following their breach last year, and discovered that the plaintiff had retained Serge Egelman, who conducted two new surveys in April on…
Senator Toomey reintroduces bill to preempt state data breach notification laws
John Eggerton reports that Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) has introduced the “Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2013” (S. 1193). Although the bill’s text is not yet available online, it’s reportedly the same bill he introduced last year: In the event of data breaches, “the bill would direct companies possessing personal data to notify…
Lawmakers seek credit monitoring for veterans
Kevin Freking of Associated Press reports: A bipartisan group of lawmakers asked the Veterans Affairs Department on Friday to offer credit monitoring to veterans and dependents whose personal information, including birth dates and Social Security numbers, might have been disclosed when its computer systems were hacked. The lawmakers are responding to testimony at a hearing where witnesses said foreign-sponsored…
California agencies’ clients vulnerable to ID theft
Shoshana Walter of The Center for Investigative Reporting has a piece on state agency data breaches, here.