Posts Tagged ‘surveillance’
Friday, June 6th, 2014
So today AT&T announced plans to test a service allowing payment card providers to access the location of a customer’s phone to improve the accuracy of fraud prevention systems for transactions made abroad. AT&T customers will have to opt-in to the fraud protection service, which will also be me made available to enterprise customers later this year.
Antone Gonsalves asked me for my opinions about the privacy implications, which he included some of within his article he published on CSO Online today. However, I wanted to make several more points to follow-on to his article. (more…)
Tags:AT&T, breach, credit card fraud, fraud prevention, GPS, GPS tracking, PIA, privacy, privacy impact assessment, privacy professor, Rebecca Herold, surveillance
Posted in privacy, privacy impact assessment | No Comments »
Thursday, April 10th, 2014
In the past couple of weeks I’ve gotten a couple dozen questions from my clients that are small to midsized covered entities (CEs) or business associates (BAs) under HIPAA, in addition to several small to midsized start-ups that provide services in other industries. And, while some of these concerns are arising out completely erroneous advice, regrettably, some of the questions resulted from my own mea culpa of writing a confusing sentence in my last blog post, for which I’ve since provided a clarification within. (Lesson: I need to spend more time double-checking/editing text prior to posting after doing edits to cut the length.) I apologize for any confusion or alarm that may have arisen as a result.
However, this does provide a good opportunity to examine in more depth the compliance issues related to Windows XP use, and the related questions I’ve received. The following are the most common questions I’ve answered in the past several days. (more…)
Tags:awareness, compliance, cybersecurity, data protection, HIPAA, IBM, Information Security, infosec, midmarket, non-compliance, PCI DSS, personal information identifier, personal information item, PI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, security, surveillance, training, upgrade, Windows XP, XP upgrade
Posted in HIPAA | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 25th, 2014
If you haven’t heard yet, Windows XP will no longer be supported after April 8, 2014. That’s just a couple of weeks away! Why should you even care? Well, because you may have an important, or even mission-critical, computing device you use for your business, or for personal use, that is running on Windows XP. According to NetMarketShare at the end of February, 2014, 30% of all folks using Windows desktop computers were still running Windows XP. This is around ½ a BILLION computers, folks! After support ends, (more…)
Tags:awareness, compliance, cybersecurity, data protection, IBM, Information Security, infosec, midmarket, non-compliance, personal information identifier, personal information item, PI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, security, surveillance, training, upgrade, Windows XP, XP upgrade
Posted in Information Security | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 20th, 2014
It seems that right now phone scam season is going strong! Last week I posted about some common scams targeting businesses. Those same scams are also targeting the general public, so please be on the lookout for them. In addition to those, here are some others that seem to be targeting primarily individuals and the general public. (more…)
Tags:awareness, compliance, cybercrooks, cybersecurity, data protection, IBM, Information Security, infosec, Keywords: phone scams, midmarket, non-compliance, personal information identifier, personal information item, phishing, PI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, robocall, security, social engineering, surveillance, training
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, March 14th, 2014
It seems that right now phone scam season is going strong! I got 2 calls last week from scammers. I got another scammer call during a meeting last night. Two of my LinkedIn contacts got calls in the past week that they asked me about. A local newspaper columnist got a call from a scammer. As folks are becoming more aware of phishing attempts via email and other types of malware, they are also becoming more lax about spotting phone scams, often stating the belief that most crooks are using online phishing scams instead of any other type of rip-off. (more…)
Tags:awareness, compliance, cybercrooks, cybersecurity, data protection, IBM, Information Security, infosec, Keywords: phone scams, midmarket, non-compliance, personal information identifier, personal information item, phishing, PI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, robocall, security, social engineering, surveillance, training
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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…)
Tags:awareness, compliance, cybercrooks, cybersecurity, data protection, encrypt, encryption, IBM, Information Security, infosec, midmarket, Mobile apps, mobile device, non-compliance, NSA, personal information, personal information identifier, personal information item, PI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, security, surveillance, training, wearable device, wireless
Posted in Information Security, mobile computing, privacy | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013
“Sometimes I feel like…somebody’s watching me! And I have no privacy!”
(The Rockwell hit from…quite appropriately…1984.)
Each day, we are tracked by the ‘smart’ systems, mobile apps, personal communication devices and other surveillance platforms that have become commonplace in our daily lives. In an effort to educate more people, and businesses, about the data trails they are leaving behind (and the companies, data bureaus and marketers who are sniffing out that trail), I created this new infographic (more…)
Tags:awareness, big data, breach, compliance, data protection, encrypt, encryption, IBM, Information Security, information technology, infosec, Internet of Things, IT security, midmarket, monitoring, NIST, non-compliance, NSA, personal information identifier, personal information item, PHI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy breach, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, security, social network, surveillance, systems security, training
Posted in Miscellaneous, privacy | No Comments »
Thursday, September 26th, 2013
I’ve received numerous questions from various news outlets, clients and colleagues since the published revelation that the NSA was getting the assistance of encryption vendors to decrypt messages throughout a very wide range of activities. A lot of folks are now throwing their hands in the air, claiming that encryption is now no longer effective, and planning to use something completely different. Hmm…wait! Don’t throw out the encryption baby with the unsafe practices bathwater yet. Encryption is still an effective, and necessary, information security control to use. The following are (more…)
Tags:awareness, BA, BAA, breach, business associate, CE, compliance, covered entity, data protection, encrypt, encryption, HIPAA, HITECH, IBM, Information Security, information technology, infosec, IT security, midmarket, monitoring, NIST, non-compliance, NSA, Omnibus, personal information identifier, personal information item, PHI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy breach, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, RSA, security, social network, surveillance, systems security, training
Posted in government, Information Security | No Comments »
Friday, August 30th, 2013
Over the past week a few reporters who were following up on a recent breach of 9 million patient records for stories they were writing asked me basically the same question amongst all their others, “What are the barriers that stop healthcare organizations from encrypting their devices?” One of the resulting stories, by Marianne McGee, has been posted at HealthCareInfosecurity. During my work with a wide range of small to large organizations, in a wide range of industries, I’ve found there are some common reasons why encryption is not implemented. Here are the top four I’ve run across. (more…)
Tags:awareness, BA, BAA, breach, business associate, CE, compliance, covered entity, data protection, encrypt, encryption, HIPAA, HITECH, IBM, Information Security, information technology, infosec, IT security, midmarket, monitoring, non-compliance, Omnibus, personal information identifier, personal information item, PHI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy breach, privacy laws, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, security, social network, surveillance, systems security, training
Posted in HIPAA, Information Security | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 27th, 2013
The deadline for complying with the Omnibus Rule is quickly approaching. Psst…it’s September 23 for most covered entities (CEs) and business associates (BAs). I’ve been tardy in getting blog posts made because I’ve been happy to have the opportunity to help my hundreds of Compliance Helper and Privacy Professor clients to get into compliance with all the HIPAA and HITECH rules, many just getting there for the first time, in addition to the Omnibus Rule changes and new requirements. I’ve been getting a lot of HIPAA questions from many of the CEs and BAs. I thought it would be helpful to provide some of them on my blog. I’ll start with an interesting question about (more…)
Tags:awareness, BA, BAA, breach, business associate, CE, compliance, covered entity, data protection, HIPAA, HITECH, IBM, Information Security, information technology, infosec, IT security, marketing, midmarket, monitoring, non-compliance, Omnibus, personal information identifier, personal information item, PHI, PII, policies, privacy, privacy breach, privacy laws, privacy practice, privacy professor, privacyprof, Rebecca Herold, risk assessment, risk management, sales, security, social network, surveillance, systems security, training
Posted in BA, CE, HIPAA, Laws & Regulations | No Comments »
