Management Liability Update

Archive for January, 2010

SMBs Increase Investment in Data Security

Icon January 28, 2010 – 7:12 am

More and more security firms are pushing their products towards the SMB market.  In a recent press release, Blackhat Solutions  looks to sell its services by warning “small to medium businesses of their financial and legal susceptibility in the face of increasingly sophisticated data hacking.”  This is no surprise given Forrester Research projects that about 40 percent of SMBs [...]



Data Breach Expenses and BCBS of TN

Icon January 27, 2010 – 10:17 pm

According to a news report, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee admitted on January 25th that it has spent more than $7 million to address an October theft of 57 computer hard drives.   The company said that it may have to spend millions more to assess what was on the missing computer records and to provide identity protection for affected customers.   According [...]



Google Attacks Provide a Valuable Lesson

Icon January 26, 2010 – 8:22 am

The facts are starting to surface regarding the recent attacks against Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – all of which have been linked to Chinese interests.  According to one recent report, the attackers selected employees with access to proprietary data, determined their social networking friends and then hacked into those accounts.  Once in control of the friends’ [...]



Ponemon Cost of Breach Report Released

Icon January 25, 2010 – 7:05 am

According to the latest Ponemon COB report, data breach attacks have doubled this past year while the average cost of a data breach has increased to $204 per compromised record.  The Ponemon Institute looked at several variables when determining this $204 number, including:  lost business; legal fees; disclosure expenses; consulting help, including forensics; and remediation expenses such as improved [...]



Is the Billable Hour Really Dead?

Icon January 20, 2010 – 6:24 am

Law firms generally bill by charging an hourly rate for their “timekeeper” services.  Billing rates can slide up or down based on the litigation matter or transaction – for example, the pre-packaged rates provided to an insurer for defense work – or by the seniority of the timekeeper – with partners potentially charging hundreds more [...]



Security MSP Option for Small Business Owners

Icon January 19, 2010 – 6:01 am

As pointed out by this article, when it comes to network security, small business owners are often ”hampered by a lack of resources, fewer qualified security personnel, less money to buy necessary products, and more difficulties complying with regulations that often were written without companies of their size in mind.”  And, as pointed out in this article, a small business [...]



Is Privacy Really Dead?

Icon January 18, 2010 – 10:04 am

According to this article, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently said that ”privacy was no longer a ‘social norm”’.   This convenient point of view comes less than a month after Facebook changed the way it organizes user information.  Under the old system, people had the option of being  placed into regional networks like “North Jersey”, while the new system removes this distinction [...]



Planning for Disaster

Icon January 15, 2010 – 7:54 am

Today is the one year anniversary of the “Miracle on the Hudson” – the day a plane landed in the Hudson River after its engines ate too many geese and shut down.  All of this took place literally shouting distance from New York City’s skyscrapers.  The captain of the plane as well as a group of passengers each wrote a book [...]



Law Firm Suing Chinese Developers Suffers Attack

Icon January 15, 2010 – 7:02 am

Although law firms have been hit with network security attacks over the years and sustained significant losses in the process, it has never been the case that they were targeted simply because they chose the wrong side in a litigation.  That is until now.   According to this report, an exploit took place weeks after “filtering software [...]



Are you ready for Data Privacy Day?

Icon January 12, 2010 – 4:19 pm

On January 28, 2010, the United States, Canada, and 27 EU countries will celebrate the second annual Data Privacy Day.  If you go to the Data Privacy Day website, you will see links to some helpful privacy resources. It is with no small bit of irony that Data Privacy Day will also approximately mark the [...]