Hunton Andrews Kurth writes: On April 5, 2022, North Carolina became the first state in the U.S. to prohibit state agencies and local government entities from paying a ransom following a ransomware attack. North Carolina’s new law, which was passed as part of the state’s 2021-2022 budget appropriations, prohibits government entities from paying a ransom to…
Category: Of Note
Court Rejects Demand for “Corrective” Notice in Blackbaud Data Breach MDL
Brianna Soltys and Kristin L. Bryan of Squire Patton Boggs write that the the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which had consolidated all federal lawsuits against Blackbaud in the District of South Carolina, has rejected plaintiffs’ motion to require Blackbaud to issue a corrective notice. As a brief reminder: Blackbaud provides third-party services for entities…
New Black Basta ransomware springs into action with a dozen breaches
Lawrence Abrams reports: A new ransomware gang known as Black Basta has quickly catapulted into operation this month, breaching at least twelve companies in just a few weeks. The first known Black Basta attacks occurred in the second week of April, as the operation quickly began attacking companies worldwide. While ransom demands likely vary between victims,…
Illuminate Education Breach Notice
New York State Education Department has addressed the Illuminate data breach in a notice on the state’s site that advises school districts that they must make their best effort to contact all students, including former students for whom they have addresses. They are also advising districts to keep records of who they notified and who…
Kaiser Wins Trademark Injunction Against Patient Data Company
Isaiah Poritz reports: Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. won a preliminary injunction in California federal court against medical records company SureFile Filing Systems for attempting to sell patient data using Kaiser’s trademarks. Kaiser is likely to succeed on the merits of its breach of contract and common law trademark counterclaims against SureFile, Judge Mark C. Scarsi…
Web scraping is legal, US appeals court reaffirms
Zack Whittaker reports: Good news for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists: Scraping publicly accessible data is legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling. The landmark ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals is the latest in a long-running legal battle brougcht by LinkedIn aimed at stopping a rival company from web scraping personal…