The new year appears to be continuing a trend begun in 2008 — ever increasing hype concerning the level of data security threats faced by public and private entities.  This hype is not just about increasing public breach disclosures (which have primarily been driven by the increase in breach notification laws) given it also manifests [...]

According to a recently released report, the New York metropolitan area — including several nearby New Jersey counties — has more technology workers than any other in the United States.  The New York metro area had 317,000 technology jobs in 2009, topping a list of 60 other metropolitan areas, according to the Cybercities 2010: The [...]

A growing list of technolgy vendor settlements should be a wake up call to tech vendors both large and small.   For example, last month, HP resolved a legacy EDP lawsuit to the tune of $460 million.  The facts of the case are not very complicated.  A decade ago, British firm BSkyB retained EDS to provide a CRM system for BSkyB’s help [...]

As of March 1, 2010, any company, organization, association or entity that has any sensitive personal information of a Massachusetts resident must now comply with a new law – Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth (201 CMR 17.00).  This new law impacts an entity even if it is not [...]

In a February 22, 2010 press release, the Federal Trade Commission states that it notified “almost 100 organizations that personal information, including sensitive data about customers and/or employees, has been shared from the organizations’ computer networks and is available on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks to any users of those networks, who could use it to commit identity [...]

On February 22, 2010, as required by section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) website posted a list of the covered entities that have reported breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting more than 500 individuals.  By posting this information on the OCR website, OCR has met its HITECH Act obligation, which required [...]

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’ [...]

If you are a larger middle-market company, another “below the radar” IT risk factor that may be impacting you may be driven by the cost savings inherent in using virtualized servers and desktops.  A security breach in a virtualized environment can have greater consequences than the same breach in a traditional IT environment because it is [...]