Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Jose A. Gonzalez, Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), announce that Judes Celestin, 36, of Hollywood, pled guilty for his role in an identity theft tax refund scheme that resulted in the receipt of approximately $1 million in…
Federal court dismisses LabMD's complaint against the FTC
Well, only minutes ago I had said Judge Duffey of the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia might still be persuaded by the government’s arguments about jurisdiction, however annoyed he appeared with the FTC. And I was right. He just dismissed LabMD’s complaint, finding that the complaint was not ripe for review because…
No southern comfort for the FTC in a Georgia federal court?
If federal judge William S. Duffey, Jr. in the Northern District of Georgia decides his court has jurisdiction to hear LabMD’s challenge to the FTC’s authority to enforce data security for HIPAA-covered entities, the FTC may be in for a bumpy ride. In a hearing on May 7, Judge Duffey noted how burdensome consent orders…
PREIT discloses breach involving employee data hosted on UltiPro
Philadelphia-based PREIT (Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust) became the latest firm to disclose that its Human Resources information on employees and their dependents and beneficiaries had been accessed by an unknown third party from an UltiPro-hosted system. PREIT learned of the breach on April 16. In April, when Brian Krebs first reported on breaches associated…
ICO turns teacher with hit-list of top data breach weaknesses
John E. Dunn reports: The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is burnishing its credentials as a centre of best practice by publishing a hit-list of the top security weaknesses it says are the root cause of many of the data breaches it investigates. Protecting Personal Data in Online Services: Learning from the Mistakes of Others serves as…
The Anatomy of an FTC Privacy and Data Security Consent Order
Daniel Solove and Woodrow Hartzog write: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently entered into a consent order with the media service Snapchat for not living up to its promises about how it maintains the privacy and security of user’s data. The FTC order prohibits Snapchat from “misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security, or confidentiality of…