by Daniel J. Solove Last week, the White House released its report, Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values. My reaction to it is mixed. The report mentions some concerns about privacy with Big Data and suggests some reforms, but everything is stated so mildly, in a way designed to please everyone. The report is painted […]
Category: Data Security
Posts about Data Security by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
Our Privacy and Data Security Depend Upon Contracts Between Organizations
by Daniel J. Solove Increasingly, companies, hospitals, schools, and other organizations are using cloud service providers (and also other third party data service providers) to store and process the personal data of their customers, patients, clients, and others. When an entity shares people’s personal data with a cloud service provider, this data is protected in […]
5 Key Quotes from the FTC v. Wyndham Decision on Data Security
by Daniel J. Solove This post was co-authored by Professor Woodrow Hartzog. The long-awaited federal district court opinion in FTC v. Wyndham was finally released last week. The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey rejected Wyndham’s arguments that the FTC lacks the authority to regulate unfair data security practices, that the FTC […]
Heartbleed: A Data Security Bug of Titanic Proportions that Affects Most of the Internet and that Will Have Enormous Implications
by Daniel J. Solove It sounds like a late April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t. Heartbleed, a data security bug in Open SSL, allows hackers to access personal data and encryption keys. This vulnerability has existed for 2+ years, and there is no way to know if your data has been compromised. And the majority […]
One of the Most Important Data Security Cases Was Just Decided: FTC v. Wyndham
by Daniel J. Solove The case has been quite long in the making. The opinion has been eagerly anticipated in privacy and data security circles. Fifteen years of regulatory actions have been hanging in the balance. We have waited and waited for the decision, and yesterday, it finally arrived. The case is FTC v. Wyndham, […]
Waking Up the C-Suite to Privacy and Security Risks
by Daniel J. Solove I was recently interviewed in the Journal of AHIMA on how the C-suite is waking up to the new realities of privacy and data security risks. Before the HITECH Act in 2009, HIPAA enforcement was based on a cooperative model where HHS was not punitive in its approach. Now, big fines […]
Duties When Contracting with Data Service Providers
by Daniel J. Solove In the world of data protection, it’s an old story: Personal data gets shared with a third party data service provider, and then something goes wrong at the provider. Whose fault is it? The organization that shared the personal data with the vendor certainly has responsibility, as organizations are generally responsible […]
Is Data Security Awareness Training Effective?
by Daniel J. Solove A recent article in CIO explores the question: Is data security awareness training effective? The answer: Yes. The article points to an ISACA study that seeks to measure the effectiveness of data security awareness training. The study concludes: “Security awareness training is a vital nontechnical component to information security. As such, […]
Data Security Is an Art, Not Just a Science
by Daniel J. Solove Far too often, the mandate for data security is simply to “secure it,” and people often think of data security as a set of clear choices. This is in contrast to privacy, which is understood as a set of muddy policy issues. But data security is, in fact, quite muddy itself. […]
4 Points About the Target Breach and Data Security
by Daniel J. Solove There seems to be a surge in data security attacks lately. First came news of the Target attack. Then Neiman Marcus. Then the U.S Courts. Then Michael’s. Here are four points to consider about data security: 1. Beware of fraudsters engaging in post-breach fraud. After the Target breach, fraudsters sent out […]