At the PHI Protection Network conference last week, we spent a lot of time discussing the increasing rate of ransomware attacks. I asked a number of people whether they thought that ransomware attacks that (merely) locked up the data with no evidence of exfiltration had to be reported to HHS. I got a variety of…
Category: Federal
Update on Canadian Data Breach Regulations: Consultation
Timothy M. Banks of Dentons writes: Innovations, Science and Economic Development Canada has issued a consultation paper asking Canadians what should be included in new data breach regulations that will be made under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act(PIPEDA). The consultation will close on May 31, 2016. Following this consultation process, the Canadian Government will publish…
HIPAA Covered Entities Not Responsible For Intercepted Transmission of PHI When Individual Requested Unsecured Transmission, Office for Civil Rights Concludes
Joseph Lazzarotti of Jackson Lewis highlights an important note in recent OCR guidance: What is a covered entity’s obligation under the Breach Notification Rule if it transmits an individual’s PHI to a third party designated by the individual in an access request, and the entity discovers the information was breached in transit? If a covered…
uKnowKids updates its breach report and answers a question I posed
There’s an update to uKnowKids’ breach disclosure, here. They assert that their analysis shows only one IP address – presumably researcher Chris Vickery’s – downloaded any data from their misconfigured database. They do not name the provider responsible for security the database. According to their statement, the misconfigured instance of the database occurred on December…
FTC Says Listen Up When Vulnerability Reports Come In
James Denvil and Paul Otto of Hogan Lovells write: The FTC wants companies to listen. More precisely, the FTC wants companies to pay attention to and promptly to respond to reports of security vulnerabilities. That’s a key takeaway from the Commission’s recent settlement with ASUSTek (“ASUS”). In its complaint against the Taiwanese router manufacturer, the FTC alleged that ASUS…
Department of Homeland Security Issues Procedures Regarding Sharing Cybersecurity Information
On February 16, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), in collaboration with other federal agencies, released a series of documents outlining procedures for both federal and non-federal entities to share and disseminate cybersecurity information. These documents were released as directed by the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 (the “Act”), signed into law on December 18, 2015. The…