Privacy Tuesday - June 17, 2014
What's that old saying ... "a day late and a dollar short?" Here is our Privacy Monday roundup ... on Tuesday.
Office for Civil Rights HIPAA Crackdown?
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) -- the enforcement arm of the Department of Health and Human Services -- has been quite busy since June of 2013. Nine settlements have been announced for HIPAA violations, totaling more than $10 million in penalties assessed, including a whopping $4.8 million against New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University. According to the OCR chief counsel for the Chicago region -- that's just the beginning. Jerome Meites told a conference in Chicago, "(k)nowing what's in the pipeline, I suspect that number will be low compared to what's coming up." Risk assessments are certainly in order.........pay now, or pay later.
Read more here -- Law360 (registration may be required)
FCC Chairman to Private Sector: Take Action
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has made his first major speech on cybersecurity. He urged the communications industry last week to be "proactive." Wheeler said that the FCC's job is to create a "new paradigm" for cybersecurity oversight -- rather than regulation -- that he anticipates would move faster than the traditional rulemaking process and would rely on industry transparency.
"Companies large and small within the communications sector must implement privacy-protective mechanisms to report cyberthreats to each other and, where necessary, to government authorities," he said. "We cannot continue on a path that lets individual networks put other networks, American businesses and consumers at risk. We need to develop market accountability that doesn't currently exist."
Read more -- Washington Post
And, Your World Cup-Related Story for the Day
"Che Commodore" claims to have carried out DDoS attacks against a number of Brazilian websites related to the World Up, including that of Brazil's intelligence agency. "Che," who claims to be a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous, sais that there is still more to come. Experts have been warning for months of the possibility of cyberattacks during the World Cup.
Read more - Reuters
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