RADAR Blog

“There is only one amount of money—just not enough,” author Andrew Kaufman once wrote. Many departments in an organization feel the financial pinch, especially privacy teams, who face the challenge of completing herculean tasks on a small budget. Privacy budgets tend to be microscopic compared to those of security or IT/infosec teams. Thus, critical privacy activities such as incident response often get lower budgetary priority than new cybersecurity initiatives—and when that happens, the entire organization is at risk.

Today’s world is built for speed. Want a ride? Get an Uber or Lyft at your door in 10 minutes. Want your food faster? Use Grubhub and order ahead. Have a data breach requiring notification? Work quickly, because you may only have 72 hours to provide notification to individuals and regulatory authorities, depending on the jurisdiction.

In 2018, less than 10 percent of data privacy or security incidents were breaches requiring notification. Yet it wouldn’t be surprising if that percentage starts to increase. One of the key factors in breach determination is the nature of the personal information exposed. Last year, we saw a significant expansion in the definition of personal information across multiple laws.

This article is part of an ongoing series on privacy program metrics and benchmarking for incident response management, brought to you by RADAR, a provider of purpose-built decision-support software designed to guide users through a consistent, defensible process for incident management and risk assessment. Find earlier installments of this series here. 

Once an incident has been discovered, the clock starts ticking. Privacy officers and their teams must immediately investigate the incident, perform a multi-factor risk assessment according to all applicable jurisdictions to determine if the incident rises to the level of a data breach, and notify affected individuals, regulators, and authorities — often within a very short time frame. It can be a daunting task, compounded by the need to keep up with an ever-changing patchwork of data breach regulations, both enacted and proposed, each with their own unique requirements. 

The only constant in life is change, and few things in the world of privacy and data protection are evolving as much as breach notification laws. These regulations are more stringent, specific, and numerous than ever before. The constant shifting of breach notification laws makes compliance not a one-and-done activity, but requires constant vigilance to keep abreast of changes.

Constant threats to sensitive data lurk in every corner of your organization, from hard-to-detect malware to busy employees. Thus, you can bet with 100% certainty that your organization has had, is having, or will have a data privacy incident—numerous incidents in fact. Each incident must be risk assessed against the latest breach notification laws to determine if you have a notifiable breach on your hands.

2018 was all about change, especially in the breach notification realm. The tightening of existing regulations and the addition of new ones have created a seismic shift toward greater complexity and stringency. Compliance has never been more critical—and never more difficult.

Wherever data goes, risk follows close behind, particularly the risk of unauthorized access and disclosure—in other words, a data privacy or security incident. Whether they realize it or not, every organization regardless of size or industry has experienced and will experience their share of privacy incidents.

When evaluating different solutions for incident response management, many factors come into play. Understandably, budget tops the list, closely followed by security, functionality, ease of use, and more. Underlying many of these concerns is the delivery method—should you choose software-as-a-service (SaaS) or an on-premise solution?

The landscape of global data breach laws has been marked by continuous change in recent years. One of the most significant this year was the coming into force of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Described by ICO Commissioner Elizabeth Denham as “the biggest change to data protection law in a generation,” the GDPR has certainly made an impact.

The last year in the realm of privacy has been one of tremendous growth.

Next week, 1,600+ privacy professionals are heading to Austin for the annual IAPP Privacy. Security. Risk. conference. The educational opportunity and discussions happening at this conference every year surfaces new ideas, best practices, and top challenges for the privacy profession. 

A number of state data breach bills have recently gone into effect, or are poised to go into effect in the next two months. Continuing our series of articles around trends in state data breach notification laws, let’s take a look at this legislation and see what trends we can identify.

Privacy or security incidents involving protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII) are more than just probable in healthcare settings–they are inevitabile. And this makes sense, as heavily regulated industries like healthcare rely on highly personal and sensitive data to provide care, and the abundance of such data presents higher risk of unauthorized disclosures – unintentional or malicious. The frequency and types of risks to an organization’s data are growing wider, as well, from a ransomware attack or a breach in your Electronic Health Record (EHR), to a simple misdirected mailing or improper disposal of paper records.

Last weekend on January 28 we observed Data Privacy Day, an internationally recognized day intended to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection practices. First celebrated in the United States and Canada ten years ago, the day commemorates the Jan. 28, 1981 signing of Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, the first international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection.