High-tech firms to push data-privacy law
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Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and other high-tech companies are preparing to push for data-privacy legislation next year to replace what they consider an outdated patchwork of state and federal laws that are inconsistent and burdensome.
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Dear Sir, you personal data has been made public... The European Commission has published proposals for a law change that would force telecoms firms to notify regulators and customers of all breaches of their data security.â¦
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Every security professional is intimately familiar with the Law of Unintended Consequences; sometimes it even works in their favor. Case in point? The data-protection advances that RxHub needed to build to protect their real-time data-transport operation.
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Long ago, when businesses kept sensitive information locked away in file cabinets and safes, it was relatively cheap and easy to store valuable data and control who had access to it. Today, enterprises invest millions in security, storage, and compliance technologies -- all in the name of increasing visibility into where vital electronic information lives and how it is being defended.
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(InfoWorld) - Members of the U.S. Congress introduced a flurry of new technology-related bills this week, including two bills that would require companies with data breaches to notify affected customers. Senators Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, introduced the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act. In addition to requiring data breach notification, the bill would also require data brokers to disclose what information they hold on individuals. The bill would allow individuals to correct information held by data brokers, and it would require companies that have databases with personal information on more than 10,000 U.S. residents to implement data privacy and security programs. Representatives Bobby Rush, a Illinois Democrat, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, introduced the Data Accountability and Trust Act this week. Their bill, with 24 co-sponsors, authorizes the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to draw up data privacy requirements for businesses, including requirements that they have vulnerability assessments and policies for disposing of obsolete data. After a company reports a data breach, the FTC would conduct an audit of its security practices, and, like the Leahy-Sanders bill, the bill would require data brokers to disclose the information they hold on individuals and allow individuals to correct wrong information. Organizations have lost 100 million personal records belonging to U.S. residents in data breaches since 2005, Leahy said in a speech on the Senate floor. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, singled outÂ data breaches at the U.S. Department of Veterans AffairsÂ last May andÂ retailer The TJX Companies,Â announced in January, in his speech. "These data security breaches are compelling examples of why we need strong federal data privacy and security laws to protect Americansâ personal data and to address the ills of lax data security," he said. "In the information age, any company that wants to be trusted by the public must earn that trust by vigilantly protecting the databases they use and maintain." Members of Congress introduced about a dozen bills requiring data breach notification after a series of breaches in early 2005, but legislation stalled largely over committee jurisdictional wrangling. About 30 states have passed breach notification laws, most of them since 2005. The Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a trade group of IT security vendors, in January called on Congress to pass a comprehensive data protection bill, including breach notification. But some groups, including conservative think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation, have questioned the need for a breach notification law, saying the cost to businesses may far outweigh the benefits to consumers. Other tech-related bills introduced this week: -- Two bills allowing the FTC toÂ investigate the practice of pretexting, when an investigator assumes a false identity to gain access to a person's telephone records. President George Bush signed a bill creating penalties for pretexting in January, but the two new bills would give the FTC the authority to investigate and prosecute pretexters. Many lawmakers became interested in the issue afterÂ Hewlett-Packard disclosedÂ in September that investigators it had hired used pretexting in an attempt to gain access to board members' and reporters' phone records. -- A bill targeted at spyware by establishing criminal penalties for a number of actions. The bill would prohibit keystroke logging, taking control of a computer without the user's consent, diverting Web browsers, using computers to create botnets and modifying a computer users' browser and security settings without permission. Two spyware bills passed the House of Representatives by overwhelming majorities in March 2005, but the Senate didn't act on them. Â
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A recent court case dealing with key loggers installed by the feds invites the question: will security companies put the interests of their customers first?
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A Congressional inquiry into online data brokers has raised concerns that federal and local law enforcement may be skirting privacy laws to obtain calling records
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The EU's data protection commissioner says IP addresses should be regarded as personal information, a view, which, if adopted, would profoundly affect the privacy policies of companies like Google and Yahoo.
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Companies will demonstrate how their technology will work together.
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Rethinking privacy in an immodest age.
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Proposed changes to law aim to deter insiders and others who sell or deliberately misuse confidential information.
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Security vendors eye a billion-dollar pie as key section of accounting law goes into effect.
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Though communications protections exist, the law is fuzzy regarding internet and e-mail activity. Watch out for the legalization of digital mind readers tracing internet users' thoughts and interests, and trampling privacy rights in the process.
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The initiative is evidence that U.S. companies and universities are searching for ways to be less hampered by legal wrangling about who holds the patents to research.
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MICROSOFT is working on technology that will give companies more control over whether to prohibit devices that can easily be used to transfer data to and from personal computers.
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A congressional inquiry into online data brokers has raised concerns that federal and local law enforcement may be skirting privacy laws to obtain calling records
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New bills introduced in Congress this week target the privacy fallout from data breaches as well as the problems of pretexting and spyware.