Privacy & Cybersecurity

The EU Commission has formally adopted Privacy Shield and the US Department of Commerce will go live with a new Privacy Shield registration website on August 1. US companies that had been registered under Safe Harbor will need to complete a new internal review, self-certification and registration to take advantage of Privacy Shield.

The final version of Privacy Shield (which has not yet been officially published) passed the Article 31 Committee vote on July 8th and is being presented today to the LIBE committee of the European Parliament. LIBE’s vote is advisory, but it may provide some early indications as to how well Privacy Shield will survive anticipated legal attacks once it is formally adopted and implemented.

Not all the news coming out of Europe these days is about Brexit. In fact, the forces of unity and harmonization remain a top priority for European regulators hoping to combat digital security threats and create a safer and more secure environment for the entire online community.

According to several news reports, the Commission has sent a revised draft of the Privacy Shield adequacy decision to the Article 31 Committee. One tech industry news source, Ars Technica, has made available a purportedly leaked draft of the version of Privacy Shield that is being reviewed by the Article 31 Committee.

Colorado is the latest state to revisit, and expand upon, its laws pertaining to the use and protection of student data. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently signed into law House Bill 16-1423 (the “Bill”) designed to increase the transparency and security of personal information about students enrolled in Colorado’s public education system (K-12).

US companies and policy makers will no doubt spend a good chunk of the day today considering the possible implications for them of yesterday’s UK vote for Brexit. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has issued a statement to calm the markets.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR)  recently issued a warning regarding vulnerabilities in third-party applications used by entities covered by HIPAA. The OCR warning applies generally to HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates. 

The number one threat to a company's information (personal or confidential) is still its own employees. Data security and privacy training are the first lines of defense against negligent employee behavior.

The Mintz Levin Privacy and Security team is pleased to welcome Brian H. Lam to our group of privacy and security professionals. Brian comes to Mintz with broad experience in data aggregation, network data security, and technology transactions - in particular, the role security infrastructure plays in both technology transactions and M&A transactions.

While it’s making few headlines, the European Commission is still working to finalize Privacy Shield, and it’s even possible that Privacy Shield will pass a key hurdle by the end of this month. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have issued the long-awaited final procedures for both Federal and Non-Federal Entities under the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) (“Final Procedures”) that provide information on how DHS will implement CISA. 

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced (press release) that Practice Fusion, the largest cloud-based electronic health company in the United States, has agreed to settle FTC charges over deceptive practices involving the public disclosure of healthcare provider review information collected from consumers that included sensitive personal and medical information.

Sophisticated phishing scams and muscular hacking efforts continue to compromise personal and sensitive information held by insurers, hospital systems, and businesses large and small.

In this edition of the “Innocents Abroad” series, Susan Foster discusses the privacy considerations that come into play when an employee loses a laptop containing customer data abroad!

In a decision favorable to the airline industry—but not helpful to other companies—the California Court of Appeal said that a privacy enforcement action against Delta is not going to fly. On May 25, 2016, the Court of Appeal tossed the California Attorney General’s CalOPPA enforcement action against Delta Airlines, affirming the lower court’s 2013 dismissal of the case with prejudice.

Mintz Levin's Immigration Law Blog is running a series titled "Innocents Abroad" addressing issues in an increasingly globalized economy where employers assign employees all over the globe.

In its just-issued decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, No. 13-1339, slip op. (May 16, 2016), the Supreme Court has held that a plaintiff bringing suit under a federal statute must allege the existence of a concrete injury in order to have Article III standing to bring that statutory claim.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has released a new version of its data security standard for the protection of cardholder data, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

We now have a precise date for the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation to go into effect: May 25, 2018.  

If you have had to provide data breach notices across any number of states (and who hasn't....), you would know that they vary widely in how those notices must be provided to state regulators.