PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

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The Health Data Breach and ID Theft Epidemic

By Daniel J. Solove When you go to the hospital, you might worry about catching a staph infection or pneumonia, but you should also worry about contracting a nasty case of medical identity theft. Most people suffer significant harm from medical ID theft, and few are completely cured. This ailment is spreading dramatically as data […]

Burn Before You Learn or Learn Rather than Burn

By Daniel J. Solove It seems as though every week brings news of another batch of data breaches . . . and they’re getting bigger. Target. Home Depot. Sony. Anthem. The list goes on and on. The costs of many of these breaches are devastatingly large. And yet most data breaches are readily preventable. After […]

The Funniest Hacker Stock Photos

By Daniel J. Solove   I produce computer-based privacy and data security training, so I’m often in the hunt for stock photos. One of the hardest things in the world to do is to find a stock photo of a hacker that doesn’t look absolutely ridiculous. I’ve gone through hundreds of hacker stock photos, and […]

The $500,000 Value of Data Security Awareness Training

by Daniel J. Solove It has long been difficult to quantify the ROI of data security awareness training. But finally, I have been able to locate a number. According to a 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers study: “The financial value of employee awareness is even more compelling. Organizations that do not have security awareness programs—in particular, training for […]

The Best Preventative Medicine for Health Data Breaches

by Daniel J. Solove Last week, I gave a keynote address at a conference called Safeguarding Health Information: Building Assurance through HIPAA Security, sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR). I’d like to summarize my remarks here for […]

Does Training Really Work? Can It Reduce Data Security Breaches?

by Daniel J. Solove According to a recent report by Enterprise Management Associates, 56% of employees are not receiving any sort of data security awareness training. This is a rather distressing statistic. It is particularly distressing because according to another study, “when specific employee behaviors are addressed in a meaningful way to bring about a […]

Why the C-Suite Should Have Coffee with the Privacy and Security Officers Every Week

  by Daniel J. Solove As I discussed in a previous post, the two key things that organizations can do to prevent data incidents can be summed up in a simple rhyme: The C-Suite must care The workforce must be aware In this post, I want to focus on the “C-Suite” – a term used […]

10 Biggest Data Breaches: Facts and Lessons

  by Daniel J. Solove Recently, hackers from China stole 4.5 million records of patients from a hospital chain in Tennessee. Do you think that’s big? As a Bloomberg article notes, however,” they haven’t come close to entering the ranks of the biggest breaches of all time. In fact, they haven’t even cracked the top […]

The 2 Essential Ways to Prevent Data Breaches

by Daniel J. Solove We’re in the midst of a crisis in data protection. Billions of passwords stolen. . . Mammoth data breaches. . . Increasing threats. . . Malicious hackers . . .

Follow Professor Solove on Social Media

If you are interested in privacy and data security issues, there are many great ways Professor Solove can help you stay informed: Professor Solove’s LinkedIn Influencer blog You can follow Professor Solove on his blog at LinkedIn, where he is an “LinkedIn Influencer.”  He blogs about various privacy and data security issues. His blog has […]