Citing a lack of corporate contorls and preparedness to protecting mission-critical data, more corporate boards are holding back the salaries and bonuses of its chief executives. At Sony, Corp., the board of director’s decided to cut the salary of its current CEO, Howard Stringer, by 15%, and its probably successor Kazuo Hirai, from 110 million […]
In a 3-2 vote today, the Federal Communications Commission announced it would begin to regulate the Internet, effectively prohibiting Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from discriminating against any website or online service traffic. Seeing the futility of politicizing a topic that is so new to legislators, Democrat and Republican lawmakers simply punted for now on the debate. […]
Last week, the Seattle Public School District (“SPS”) sent out a notice that a law firm it had retained to handle a complaint on its behalf inadvertently delivered information of about 7,400 special education students. Information contained within the files not only included date of birth, school assignment, and grade, but it also included student […]
In August, 2013, I blogged about an insurance company’s latest product feature that enabled their customers to download all of their insurance verification documents to their cellphone through a software application. The marketing company devised a commercial whereby a pig driving a car was pulled over, and subsequently the pig handed his cellphone over to […]
The Court of Justice of the European Union issued a ruling on May 13, 2014, whereby, under certain circumstances, search engine providers, like Google, are required to remove links of Web pages containing information that is made on the basis of a person’s name and published by a third-party. The “Right to be Forgotten” lawsuit […]
Several news outlets reported yesterday that the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) is urging Congress to demand that data brokers tell consumers more about their trade practices in how they collect and use consumer information. Data brokers are companies that assemble digital profiles on nearly every U.S. consumer by gathering information from credit- and debit-card transactions, […]
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that several software antivirus companies are reinventing their business models after decades of trying to prevent hackers from penetrating its customers IT infrastructure. According to Mr. Brian Dye, Senior Vice President of Information Security, at Symantec, Corp., the antivirus “is dead” from a money-maker perspective. Rather than try to thwart hackers, […]
The sales of cyber-insurance policies has spiked sharply this year, mainly due to the increased attention and scrutiny of massive data breaches from Target and Neiman Marcus over the last holiday season. Also, in what was once an uncommon occurrence, banks are now suing retailers who have been victimized by hackers accessing mission-critical data. These […]
In a report published today in The Wall Street Journal, the Obama White House was presented with the final four recommendations for restructuring the National Security Agency’s (“NSA”) controversial bulk collection of data. As one would imagine, none of the four options available are perfect, but they include: (1) Abolishment of the entire program itself; (2) have […]
In response to the thousands of mobile applications hitting the market that often rely on consumer data (i.e. contact information, location, photos, etc.), the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) released a suggested list of security guidelines for mobile app developers to follow when designing a program. While a no one-size-fits-all checklist can exist, the FTC views […]