I’m on vacation this week, and while most people read novels while on vacation, I catch up on data privacy articles and publications that I have set aside and haven’t had a chance to read. I just finished one that I thought was a quick and good summary of current data privacy issues entitled 5
Encryption
Fifth Circuit Overturns “Arbitrary and Capricious” $4.3 Million HIPAA Penalty Against Hospital
By Conor Duffy on
On January 14, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned a $4.348 million penalty for alleged HIPAA violations assessed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) against the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Hospital). The case arises from an enforcement action undertaken by HHS following the…
UK Information Commissioner’s Office Issues Guidance on Use of Encryption and Passwords in Connection with GDPR
By Benjamin Jensen on
The “security principle” under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires that organizations process personal data securely by means of “appropriate” technical and organizational measures. This month, the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued new guidance focused on two specific measures the ICO recommends that companies consider in complying with the GDPR security requirements: encryption and passwords.
Continue Reading UK Information Commissioner’s Office Issues Guidance on Use of Encryption and Passwords in Connection with GDPR
FDIC reports five “major” data incidents to Congress
By Linn Foster Freedman on
Posted in Cybersecurity
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported on Monday, May 16, 2016, that it had experienced five “major incidents” involving the disclosure of taxpayers’ personal information since the last incident we reported on last month involving 44,000 records.
A “major incident” is defined as involving more than 10,000 records. The reported incidents all involved FDIC…
WhatsApp adds end-to-end encryption
By Kathleen Porter on
Posted in Data Security
More than a billion people on the planet use online messaging service WhatsApp to send and receive messages, photo and videos and to make phone calls over the Internet. Most of WhatsApp’s users are outside the United States.
A subsidiary of Facebook since 2014, WhatsApp just announced the addition of end-to-end encryption to every form…
Backdoors to encryption protocols vs. cybersecurity: weighing priorities in the U.S. and abroad
By Kathleen Porter on
Posted in Cybersecurity, Data Security
With the revelations that the Paris and San Bernardino attackers used encrypted communications to recruit, communicate and plan their attacks, the U.S. government is again pushing the tech industry to provide it backdoor access to encryption protocols. Bypassing security mechanisms through a backdoor, law enforcement believes, permits it to more effectively track users and content,…
NIST seeks comments on randomness to protect sensitive information
By Linn Foster Freedman on
Posted in Data Privacy
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced last week that it is seeking comments on its draft publication “Recommendation for the Entropy Sources Used for Random Bit Generation.” What does this mean in layman’s terms? Basically, in order to protect private messages, cryptography is used to encrypt the messages into a…
Encryption: What is it, Why do it!
By Sean Lawless on
Posted in Data Security, Digital Assets
Encryption is a basic term used to describe the act of encoding data, files, and digital communications such that only those with the cipher could read or understand the information. Think back to the decoder ring you got in your cereal box; the messages it decoded were encrypted. There are many different encryption algorithms used
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