Archive for the ‘Privacy and Compliance’ Category

Data Security: OECD Publishes New Privacy Guidelines for Accessing Data From Publicly Funded Research Projects

Sunday, May 6th, 2007

On May 3 the Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a new 24-page guideline,”Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding” for organizations in governments throughout the world regarding access to data from publicly funded research projects.

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Employee Privacy & New Credit Check Law In Washington State Impacts Employers: Joins Similar Laws In 4 Other States

Friday, May 4th, 2007

Doing background checks on potential employees, and regularly for certain positions with significant access to personally identifiable information (PII) or managemen capabilities, has been a growing trend in recent years. Such checks are viewed as ways to help prevent putting untrustworthy and significant at-risk individuals into positions where they could perform malicious and/or criminal activities.

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SOX Amendment Defeated: Information security and SMBs

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

A week ago today (April 24, 2007) the senate defeated an amendment in a 35 – 62 vote for allowing more lax internal control reuiqements for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).

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Addressing Privacy: There Will Never Be a Technology-Only Solution Because of the Human Factors Involved

Sunday, April 29th, 2007

Last week I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jay Cline for a Computerworld article he was doing about small companies, such as mine, that provide privacy services to organizations.

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Privacy: Surveillance and Poor Security Practices

Saturday, April 28th, 2007

Today I read with interest an article in the U.K.’s Guardian Unlimited, “Surveillance ‘intrudes on our lives‘.”
I am doing some research into various surveillance methods, such as with CCTV, key loggers, and other methods of surreptitiously recording the activities of individuals, typically without their consent, and often without their knowledge.

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Keyloggers + Social Engineering = Identity Theft: Fraudsters Exploit Human Frailties with Seductive Messages

Friday, April 27th, 2007

Fraudsters and cybercriminals continue to find creative ways to exploit technology and human weakness to facilitate their crimes. Another new exploit they are using is hijacking popular Google search terms, typically targeting bank sites, and then inserting HTML into the legitimate response pages to get end-users to provide personally identifiable information (PII), typically website user IDs and passwords, often in conjunction with keyloggers they download to the victims’ computers.

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HIPAA: More Changes and Initiatives by HHS

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

I’ve been reading so much about HIPAA lately; no enforcement actions yet, but a lot of changes, proposals and initiatives.
Two more I read about recently:

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Information Security and Privacy Professionals Must Partner on Over 15 Different Enterprise Issues

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Recently I read a print article written by a prominant privacy officer at a well-known company who has been writing a lot of articles about privacy over the past couple of years. She is successful and usually has some good advice, but what worried me about the latest article I read, and some of her other articles, is that she specifies that certain issues are handled by IT and/or the information security officer, so privacy officers do not need to worry about them or even know much, if anything at all, about them. The topics she’s mentioned have been encryption, outsourcing IT functions, and information security policies, just to name a few.

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SOX Compliance: Fraudsters Posing as Officials Selling “Compliance Solutions;” *NO* vendor Product Can Make an Organization 100% Compliant With ANY Regulation

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

Something that has irritated me for a very long time are vendors who see a chance to make a quick buck off of worried organizations, afraid they are not going to be in compliance with new laws, and create junk products to sell to them using fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). FUD products.
I saw a lot of HIPAA FUD back when that regulation went into effect, and saw way too many people spending way too much money for so-called HIPAA security and privacy certifications offered by vendors who did not even have anyone on staff with any type of healthcare provider, payer or clearinghouse practitioner experience. Not to mention HIPAA compliance solutions.

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HIPAA: Advisory Workgroup Proposes PHI Security and Privacy Requirements Should Apply to All Organizations

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a Confidentiality, Privacy, and Security Workgroup, also known as the American Health Information Community, that is made up of practitioners, IT folks, lawyers and other leaders outside of the government who want a say in how protected health information (PHI) is safeguarded, shared, and otherwise handled.

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