More Congressional progress on data breach laws

Thanks to the action of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, it looks like we have not one but two bills addressing data breach notification requirements that would apply broadly to commercial entities. The measure introduced…

National data breach law on the way?

Perhaps taking advantage of the increased attention placed on security and privacy issues, including the implementation of new data breach disclosure rules by both HHS and the FTC applicable to personal health information, Senator Patrick Leahy…

Congress and HHS continue to disagree on health data breach disclosure rules

The new federal health information data breach disclosure rules went into effect in September, but as HHS works on finalizing another set of HIPAA rule changes (this time about penalties for HIPAA violations), Mitch Wagner of…

Stiffer U.K. penalties coming for personal data misuse

The British Ministry of Justice recently published proposed new penalties for knowingly misusing personal data in violation of section 55 of the Data Protection Act. The proposals raise the maximum penalty to include jail time, in…

Early potential for national data breach regulation bears watching

Coming on the heels of numerous draft pieces of legislation from the U.S. Senate (including those from Sens. Carper, Snowe, and Rockefeller) is an announcement last week by New York Congresswoman Yvette Clarke that she hopes…

New health data breach notification rules go into effect

The rules contained in the HITECH Act requiring HIPAA-covered entities, business associates, and non-covered entities that provide personal health records (PHR) to disclose breaches of personal health information go into effect on September 23. The draft…

Health data breach notification rules published

The Department of Health and Human Services has published an interim final rule in the Federal Register formalizing requirements contained in the HITECH portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that that organizations provide breach…