By the Numbers. Education Data Breaches.

Thus far in 2017, the number of education data breaches:

  • doubled over 2016
  • the first half of 2017 saw an increase of 103%
  • North American bears the brunt of educaiton hacks, with 88% occuring here
  • 74% were caused by malicious outsiders
  • 13% were caused by stolen, lost or otherwise compromised records

Campus Technology | Education Data Breaches Double in First Half of 2017

2 Tenets of Data Security Legislation from Republicans.

Resiliance is the name of the game. R Street is calling for “resiliance” and not “remediation” in legislative solutions to data breaches.

If bills shouldn’t require that  consumers receive free credit report monitoring and cyber security standards and breach notification requirements for entities that maintain consumer data, what should bills do?

  • Require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to maintain a list of brest practices
  • The guidelines would ” empower[s] consumers to improve their resilience to cyberattacks”

R Street | Remediation won’t cut it – we need cyber resilience

TX House Interim Charge Request on Data Security for your Toll Tag.

Texas State Representatives Minajarez, Pickett, Dale, Oliverson & Goldman requested the following interim charge:​

  • Study what precautions toll road operators in Texas have in place to prevent cyber security threats, both internal and external.

The Minajarez, Pickett, Dale, Oliverson & Goldman letter to Speaker Straus dated 10.2.2017

Lege Trend: Data Breach Exposes Consumer Information? Pay the Consumer, so Says Republicans.

During the Congressional hearings on the Equifax breach, Republicans bandied about the idea of requiring credit reporting businesses, that have exposed consumer information, to pay affected consumers “a couple thousand bucks each [consumer]”

The rational: An incentive to keep business data security up to snuff

The Republican: Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), a founder of the bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus

The Hill | GOP rep pitches fines for hacked credit-monitoring firms

Small Cities. Data Security Costs. By the Numbers.

  • 40% of local government CIOs report experiencing more attacks during the last 12 months
  • 26% of CIOs reporting an attack, incident or breach attempt occurring hourly
  • 18% report a cyberattempt at least daily
  • 78% of municipalities don’t have an adequate password management policy
  • 97% of the municipalities he surveyed don’t have a well-documented disaster recovery plan
  • 46% store their backup files and records onsite rather than offsite or in the cloud
  • 90% of local governments don’t bother to encrypt sensitive emails

Government Technology | Small Towns Confont Big Cyber-Risks

Lege Trend. Data Security Legislation for Infrastructure. Read the Bill.

A House Companion to the Senate’s, Securing Energy Infrastructure Act of 2017 by Senator Angus King (I-ME) and Senator James E. Risch (R-ID), has been filed by Congressman C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02) and Congressman John R. Carter (TX-31). The legislation will:

  • “establishes a two-year pilot program to study covered entities and identify new classes of security vulnerabilities and research and test technology – like analog devices – that could be used to isolate the most critical systems of covered entities from cyber-attacks
  • develops a working group to evaluate the technology solutions proposed and develop a national cyber-informed strategy to isolate the energy grid from attacks
  • requires the Secretary of Energy to submit a report to Congress describing the results of the program, assessing the feasibility of the techniques considered, and outlining the results of the working group’s evaluations.”

H,R. 3958 (2017)

Congressman Rup[ersberger | RUPPERSBERGER INTRODUCES HOUSE COMPANION TO SENATE ENERGY GRID SECURITY MEASURE

State Regulator Subpoenas Company After Data Breach. What your Clients Need to Know.

The State:  New York

The regulator:  New York’s Department of Financial Services

The Subpoena: Seeks more information about Equifax’s data breach, including:

  • details on when Equifax learned of the breach
  • details on what actions Equifax took after the breach was discovered

More regulatory enforcement in the works? Yes, New York also wants to impose the financial data security rules it finalized this year to apply to credit reporting agencies like Equifax.

What does this mean for other states? Colorado followed in New York’s footsteps to become the 2nd state to impose specific data security requirement son the financial industry. Look for a specific application to credit reporting agencies forthwith

Reuters | New York regulator subpoenas Equifax over massive data breach: Report

New York Law Journal | NY Issues Subpoena to Equifax Over Breach, Vullo Confirms