Archive for October, 2008

More Need Than Ever For Information Security In A Bad Economy!

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

There is no doubt that this economy is impacting all companies and most individuals. I’ve read about and heard from many organizations that, as a result, their information security and privacy budgets are being drastically reduced, or even cut completely, in an attempt to save money during these uncertain times.
Throwing out the baby with the bath water in this way is a very bad idea!

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Palin Email Hacker Indicted

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

Around September 10 a widely-reported story broke about how Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email account was broken into.
Contents of some of her email messages were then widely posted to various Internet websites.

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HIPAA Compliance During Emergencies and Disasters

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Yesterday the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) posted a new HIPAA frequently asked question (FAQ) to their site; a great question that many organizations do not even consider until after the fact…

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Information Security and Privacy Convergence and Collaboration

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Effectively addressing and coordinating privacy and information security initiatives has moved to the top of the list for companies maintaining customer and employee information. However, there are often gaps in communication and collaboration between Privacy and Information Security activities.
These gaps create more complexity and bigger challenges for companies to handle, as well as putting the organization at greater risk for incidents, along with contractual and regulatory noncompliance.

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Do Your Legal Contracts Conflict with Your Web Site Privacy Policy?

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

Over the years I’ve found while doing website privacy policy reviews and gap analyses that a large portion of organizations make promises within their posted web site privacy policies that they do not support by internal procedures, and that they do not provide internal personnel training and awareness communications for; a huge risk!
I’ve also found that many organizations have online contracts for their web site customers that are in conflict with their posted privacy policies.

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Are the Terms of Your Legal Contracts Enforceable?

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Most web sites have some type of legal contract that is presented to site visitors for any number of reasons. Do your web site visitors actually read them? It probably depends upon how the contracts are presented to the web site visitors, and how the wording is constructed.
Are the contracts written clearly? Or, could they be interpreted in multiple ways? Or trick people into thinking they are agreeing to something other than what the legalese is trying to obligate them to agree to?

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