Archive for May, 2015

Will Your Contractors Take Down Your Business?

Thursday, May 21st, 2015

Do you know how well your vendors, business associates, contracted third parties (who I will collectively call “contractors”) are protecting the information with which you’ve entrusted them to perform some sort of business activity? You need to know.

Late last year, a study of breaches in the retail industry revealed 33 percent of them were from third party vendor access vulnerabilities. The largest healthcare breach in 2014 was from a business associate (the contractor of a hospital system) and involved the records of 4.5 million patients.

The list of breaches caused by contractors throughout all industries could fill a large book. The damage that your third parties can cause to your business can be significant. Do you know the risks that your contractors and other third parties bring to your organization? Or, will your contractors take down your business because of their poor security and privacy practices? (more…)

Organizations Must Consider Privacy Harms

Tuesday, May 12th, 2015

The expanding use of smart gadgets in the Internet of Things (IoT) is creating many more privacy risks than ever before encountered. Many businesses are also (finally!) starting to address privacy. And interest in how to establish privacy programs and how to perform privacy impact assessments (PIAs) to identify privacy risks are increasing. The privacy risks to the business that can occur include such things as: (more…)

Look Backward to Be Future-Ready for BYOD

Friday, May 8th, 2015

What does the past teach us about how to #befutureready in BYOD?

During the last half of the 1990s there was concern for the growing use of employees’ own home desktop computers to dial-in to the corporate network from home. Thousands of articles and hundreds of conference sessions discussed the associated risks, and then how to mitigate them through documented policies and the use of new tools. Soon after 2000 passed the concerns expanded to employees using their personally owned laptops, not only outside of the office, but even bringing them into the facilities to use instead of the corporate-issued computers. Thousands more articles, and hundreds more conference sessions discussed how to address the risks. (more…)