Federal Government

Liisa Thomas, chair of Winston’s Privacy and Data Security Practice, spoke at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform’s 16th Annuual Legal Reform Summit in Washington, D.C. recently on the topic of data privacy liability. Liisa presented a report, created by herself, and Associates Robert Newman and Alessandra Swanson: “A Perilous Patchwork: Data Privacy and Civil Liability in the Era of the Data Breach.” This is a...

Government breaches don’t make up a large proportion of data breaches, docking in at 11% of all breaches in 2014 and 7.6% of breaches thus far in 2015, and yet government agencies have been subject to an increased level of criticism over its struggles with data protection. Just why is this? I set forth to discover why the government is the most highly criticized for data breaches and how...

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) just released a report indicating that weaknesses in security programs persist across many federal agencies. The Federal Information Security Report found persistent weaknesses at all 24 federal agencies examined. These weaknesses were consistent with the findings in 2013, showing very little improvement in data protection, which is worrying given the increase in risks year-by-year.

We have talked a lot about the overlapping compliance requirements that many organizations face, when it comes to data security. Complying with State laws, Federal requirements, industry regulators, and even International laws such as the EU GDPR. We have also spoken to the importance of holding external vendors / contractors to the same security credentials expected internally. Flipping the perspective, you can then see the additional challenges organizations face...

Government Officials in the UK have been facing ongoing backlash over their ability to protect citizen information following a string of data breaches over the past few years. Most recently, East Sussex NHS Trust came under fire for misplacing a memory stick containing the personal data of 3,000 of its patients. The ICO has levied more than £5 million worth of civil monetary penalties against the public sector, with...