Legislation

Broomfield Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center settles breach-related charges with Colorado Attorney General

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser recently announced a settlement with Broomfield Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, LLC stemming from a 2021 data breach. The following is the state’s press release: Sept. 22, 2023 (DENVER) – Attorney General Phil Weiser announced today a settlement with Broomfield Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, LLC., for failing to protect the...

Attorney General James Reaches Agreement with Marymount Manhattan College to Invest $3.5 Million to Protect Students’ Online Data

NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced an agreement with Marymount Manhattan College (MMC), a private non-profit liberal arts college in New York City, to invest $3.5 million in data security to protect students’ online data. In 2021, MMC suffered a data breach that affected nearly 100,000 New Yorkers who were...

DHS Pushes for Common Cyber Incident Reporting Definitions

Jose Rascon reports: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a new report looking to wrangle the different avenues in which the Federal government and its agencies report cyber incidents in a more ‘reportable’ fashion. The report, titled “Harmonization of Cyber Incident Reporting to the Federal Government” and released on Sept. 19, comes...

OCR Presents: How the Security Rule Can Help Defend Against Cyber-Attacks

The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will be producing a pre-recorded webinar for HIPAA covered entities and business associates (collectively, “regulated entities”) discussing how the Security Rule can help regulated entities defend against cyber-attacks. The webinar will discuss real world cyber-attack trends from OCR breach reports and investigations and explore how implementation of...

NYC schools are tightening cybersecurity. Some educators fear unintended consequences.

Michael Elsen-Rooney reports: Following two high-profile data breaches, New York City’s Education Department has moved to shore up its cybersecurity protocols, increasing its vetting of software vendors and tightening email access for schools and parent leaders. Because of the new protocols, the school year has started without approvals for scores of programs, including popular...

IOCTA spotlight report on malware-based cyber-attacks published

Following the Internet Organised Crime Assessment (IOCTA) 2023, today Europol published the spotlight report “Cyber Attacks: The Apex of Crime-as-a-Service”. It examines developments in cyber-attacks, discussing new methodologies and threats as observed by Europol’s operational analysts. The report also outlines the types of criminal structures that are behind cyber-attacks, and how these increasingly professionalised groups are...

California Privacy Protection Agency publishes new draft regulations addressing AI, risk assessments, cyber audits

Philip N. Yannella, Gregory P. Szewczyk, and Timothy Dickens of Ballard Spahr write: The California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) recently published two new sets of draft regulations addressing a range of cutting-edge data protection issues.  Although the CPPA has not officially started the formal rulemaking process, the Draft Cybersecurity Audit Regulations and the Draft Risk Assessment Regulations will...

HHS Office for Civil Rights Settles with L.A. Care Health Plan Over Potential HIPAA Security Rule Violations

LA Care, the largest publicly operated health plan in the country paid $1,300,000 to settle Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a settlement of potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Rules with LA Care, the nation’s largest publicly operated health plan...

An inexcusable gap from breach to notification, or an excusable one?

Some state and federal laws provide specific timeframes by which breached entities must provide notice to regulators and to those affected by a data breach. Unfortunately, loopholes abound, as we seen in statutory language such as Minnesota’s breach notification law, where for timing of notification, it says: “The disclosure must be made in the...