Will complying with requirements in 201 CMR 17 give any tips to healthcare entities?

With the rapidly approaching March 1 deadline when Massachusetts’ new personal data protection law (201 CMR 17) finally goes into effect, one of many requirements facing organizations covered by the law is the need to encrypt…

Facebook sued over December change in privacy practices

In a post earlier this week, we noted that generally speaking, anyone in the U.S. wanting to take legal action over the privacy practices of social networking sites like Facebook would have to do so within…

Defense approach to cybersecurity includes greater separation from Internet

Based on details about IT security spending in the publicly available fiscal 2011 budget estimates for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), one area of emphasis for improving cybersecurity for military networks is to reduce their…

Requests for health data by insurer raise questions

In a story reported by the Hartford Courant, a series of requests for health records sent to Connecticut doctors by Ingenix have garnered attention both for the nature of the requests and the manner in which…

More action, not just talk, needed on cybersecurity

Former acting federal cybersecurity chief Melissa Hathaway used the public forum afforded her by the Internet Security Alliance yesterday to warn that the government is losing the sense of urgency it needs to tackle the many…

It’s good to have a contingency plan for Web site traffic surges

The record snowfall in the Washington, D.C. area since last weekend has been notable for the widespread closings it has caused, and came with an unanticipated side effect for the federal government: the unavailability of its…

Latest US-EU privacy divergence: pictures of your house

The “street view” feature of Google maps is proving to be yet another example of innovative uses of new technology raising legal and ethical questions about personal privacy, and of differing perspectives on just what is…