Posts Tagged ‘personal information’

TV Ratings Should Not Trump Patient Privacy

Saturday, January 3rd, 2015

Yesterday I read a news story about how a woman, Mrs. Anita Chanko, saw an episode of the Dr. Oz show “NY Med” that included video of her husband, who had died 16 months earlier, in the hospital receiving care after being hit by a truck while crossing the street. She did not know that such a video even existed.

The picture was blurred, but the woman knew it was her recently deceased husband because she recognized his voice when he spoke, the conversation topic, the hospital where the care was occurring, along with other visual indicators. She heard her husband ask about his wife; her. She then watched his last moments of life, and then his death on television. (more…)

5 Effective Ways to Raise Privacy Awareness

Thursday, December 18th, 2014

Have you made plans for Data Privacy Day (DPD) yet? What, you’ve never heard of DPD?  You can see more about it here. Or, have you heard about DPD, but you’ve not yet had time to plan for it? Well, I love doing information security and privacy awareness activities and events! I’ve been doing them for 2 ½ decades, and have written about them often, and included a listing of 250 awareness activities in my Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness and Training Program book.

Here are five of the ways that I’ve found to be very effective for raising privacy awareness throughout the years. (more…)

This is Protected Health Information

Thursday, December 18th, 2014

Once or twice a week I get a question from an organization that is considered to be a healthcare covered entity (CE) or business associate (BA) under HIPAA (a U.S. regulation) asking about the types of information that is considered to be protected health information (PHI). Last week a medical devices manufacturer, that is also a BA, asked about this. I think it is a good time to post about this topic again.

If information can be (more…)

Every Organization with Personal Information Needs to Do a Privacy Impact Assessment

Thursday, December 11th, 2014

Today I had a great meeting with Sarah Cortes, with whom I am doing a session at the North America CACS ISACA conference in March. (I see I need to ask them to add Sarah’s name!)

I’m also going to teach a 2-day workshop (~4 hours each day), “Conducting A Privacy Impact Assessment” on March 18 & 19.

Every organization that handles personal information (PI) of any kind or form needs to know how to do a privacy impact assessment (PIA). And if you have PI from any type of individual, be it a customer, patient, employee, contractor, job applicant, etc., you need to make sure you are protecting, using and sharing the PI appropriately. A PIA will reveal where you are at risk with meeting your privacy obligations. Attend my PIA class in March and I will be happy to help you know how, or improve upon how you perform PIAs!

Can’t go to the conference for some reason? I can still help you! I have a PIA Toolkit you can use.

Any questions? Let me know!

“Privacy Information” Depends upon Context

Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

This year Admiral Mike Rogers, the current Commander, U.S. Cyber Command and Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service, gave the luncheon keynote address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Third Annual Cybersecurity Summit, “Sharing Cyber Threat Information to Protect Business and America.” You can find it at: (more…)

4 Privacy Predictions for 2015

Saturday, November 29th, 2014

It is that time of the year again…time for prognostications about the year ahead!

I was asked to provide a few predictions for 2015. Based upon not only what I’ve seen in 2014, but also foreshadowing from the past two-three decades, here are some realistic possibilities.  (more…)

NSA is not the Only One Getting to Your App Data

Wednesday, February 26th, 2014

Do you think the NSA is the biggest threat to your privacy? Certainly they are collecting a significant amount of personal data. And from the looks of it, with their new facility that may hold up to 12 exabytes (that’s 12,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data, they appear to be planning to continue collecting, and keeping, more data. This is an important topic, and I’ll look at in more depth in an upcoming blog post. But for now, you need to know and understand that there are many other entities that are collecting data from you and your mobile apps in the same way as NSA is slurping it up, along with several other ways. (more…)

Mobile Device Security Continues to get More Complicated

Saturday, February 1st, 2014

I first started working on truly easily mobile computing device (not counting the first programmable pocket calculator, or the luggable computers that could not be hidden in your pocket) security in the workplace when the IT folks in my company at the time started bringing Psion devices to meetings somewhere around 1992 – 1993.  They presented some serious information security risks to the company. If the information security risks were considered to be significant 20 years ago, now the new additional information security and privacy risks are comparatively staggering.

Where is it?

Probably the number one risk back then was the tendency to lose or misplace the device.  It seemed like these little gadgets would be forgotten the moment they were laid down, despite how highly prized they were by their owners. Mobile computing devices today (more…)

Time to Focus on Privacy Every Day

Friday, January 31st, 2014

This week January 28 was recognized around the world at International Data Privacy Day. Data Privacy Day is the perfect time to think about all things privacy. For example, consider all the computing devices and gadgets you use, including smartphones and tablets.  Many folks don’t realize these devices are continually collecting personal information about (more…)

Yes, You Still Need Policies for Your Outsourced Activities!

Friday, December 27th, 2013

Here’s a statement I’ve answered over 100 times (seriously!) in the past few years.

“We’ve outsourced that IT activity, so we don’t we don’t need a policy for it.”

The one word reply to this statement is, (more…)