Welcome to the Future!
A coalition of business groups, including:
are urging federal lawmakers to retain a provision in federal data breach legislation that will require 3rd party vendors to notify consumers when they experience a data breach.
Target’s holiday 2013 data breach continues to breed lawsuits and settlements. Target recently settled with Mastercard for $20 million.
The $20 million will go to financial institutions to:
Federal data breach legislation that would preempt 38 state laws on data breach, was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The biggest rift in the committee is whether federal law should preempt stronger state laws.
Last week Congressman Lamar Smith held “Reining in the EPA: A Regulation Roundtable” one of the invitees was Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.
When conversation moved to a “secret” EPA map of U.S. waterways, Commissioner Miller indicated that the EPA released personal information about farms and ranches. The information was released to “environmental extremist groups.” It is reported that Homeland Security department called the release of the farm and ranch water maps is “a bioterrorist threat.”
38 states have stronger state laws. The federal legislation would preempt those state laws and the lower, weaker standard would prevail. Washington Post
Alabama is the 48th state to enact data security laws, and one of a few that have revamped data security statutes post major retail data breaches. The Alabama legislation will triger notification within 30 days when any of the following information is hacked:
It also addresses record retention of data breaches.
Data security and the political world is a sordid affair. We’ve seen data hacking by campaigns leading to arrests, and now, the Hill reports on data breaches that have K Street on edge.
The head of the American bar Association Cybersecurity Legal Task Force offers a serious warning:
“What a lobbyist might call blowing off steam could harm their business if it offends a client. For them, the risk is less about revealing state secrets or bribery than it is about humiliation, about damage to their firm’s reputation,””
Since New Year’s Day, 90 Million individual health care records have been exposed by data hackers.
Why is health care data targeted? The data is highly valuable on the black market.
How are hackers gaining access to health care data? Via portals in electronics such as sonogram machines, conference call machines, fax machines… MD Anderson tests all its electronic equipment for security protcols.
The Federal Communications Commission this week fined AT&T $25 M for a data breach that caused personal information, including social security numbers, of 280,000 AT&T customers to be breached.
AT&T will incur more costs as it notified affected customers and pays for credit monitoring services, per the FCC order.
Data Security and data privacy is a near and dear to Libertarian types. Think Rand Paul. Libertarian types look to the Federalists papers to justify constitutional positions, such as protecting Americans from government intrusion into their personal, private data.
Pointing to Federalist Paper 33 and 44, when a national interest exists, it is necessary and proper for the federal government to act.