De-identification is a great privacy tool for all types of businesses, of all sizes. If you have personal data that you want to use for research, marketing, testing applications, statistical trending or some other legitimate purpose, but you don’t need to know the specific individuals involved in order to meet your goals, then you should consider de-identifying the personal data. Even though it sounds complicated there are many good methods you can use to accomplish de-identification. And the great thing is, (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘PII’
6 Good Reasons to De-Identify Data
Friday, March 30th, 2012Make Privacy One of Your 2012 Resolutions
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012Happy New Year! I hope your year is starting out great. Have you made it to day 3 without breaking any of your resolutions? How about adding one more… (more…)
Smart Grid Privacy: Possible Privacy Standards To Address Concerns
Saturday, November 28th, 2009Sorry to be so tardy in getting a blog post out. As many of you know I’ve been working with the NIST Smart Grid Privacy Subgroup since late June. The work done for this group is through time volunteered by all involved.
As a quick recap, I led the privacy impact assessment (PIA) for the consumer-to-utility portion of the planned smart grid during the late June to late August/early September time frame. On Friday, 11/20, I provided an update on our NIST groups activities during the Gridwise Alliance phone conference; perhaps some of you were on that call?
Here are some links showing information about our NIST Smart Grid privacy group’s work:
15 Smart Grid Privacy Concerns + Other Smart Grid Thoughts
Monday, November 9th, 2009I’ve had about half a dozen folks ask me how things are going with the work I’m doing with the NIST Smart Grid privacy group, and if I could provide an update since my last couple of posts on the topic here and here.
The time is going by much too quickly, and I am getting a bit nervous as we get closer to when we need to have the next draft of the NISTIR ready, tentatively set for December 31; there is so much more to do in this VOLUNTEER group effort…
HIPAA And Surveillance In Hospitals
Thursday, November 5th, 2009Over the years there have been many…too many…instances where doctors have performed the wrong types of surgeries on patients, and even the wrong surgeries on completely wrong patients…
CEs and BAs: Be HIPAA/HITECH Compliant Or Pay A Hefty Penalty
Thursday, October 29th, 2009The HHS released HITECH Act Enforcement Interim Final Rule today…
Smart Grid Privacy: Laws and Implications
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009I was recently asked several questions about my work with the NIST Smart Grid privacy group and associated issues. Here are a couple of those questions, and my answers to them…
Who Are Your Business Associates?
Thursday, October 8th, 2009Since just before HIPAA went actively into effect I’ve done a lot of HIPAA compliance work for covered entities (CEs). In the past few years I’ve done around 200 business associate (BA) information security and program reviews for just one CE, and these don’t even scratch the surface for how many BAs each CE has…
HIPAA/HITECH Etc. Retention: Does Your Reality = Your Requirements?
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009Last month I had the great pleasure of being a guest on Scott Draughon and Anyck Turgeon’s MyTechnologyLawyer.com radio show for a segment entitled, “Is encryption enough to achieve privacy?”
I was pleasantly surprised to see a large number of great follow-up questions following the show!
I covered one of them in my post, “Don’t Throw Your Privacy Out The Window; Know How Your PII Is Used” Here are a couple more of those many questions I want to answer in this post…
Privacy For The Deceased
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Late last month I posted, “HIPAA/HITECH Breach Notice Rule: Applies To PHI of Deceased Individuals + Training A Key Element” and since then I’ve had around half a dozen or so folks ask me to write about privacy for the deceased…
