RADAR Blog

My work with RADAR has afforded me the opportunity to attend a number of privacy events in the past few years. Just this week I had the pleasure of attending the American Bankers Association RIsk Management Conference in Austin. This event, which covered a wide range of risk concerns for banking professionals, surfaced many conversations about breach notification requirements and the challenges facing privacy professionals.

In my role at RADAR, I have the distinct pleasure of working directly with our customers, learning about the challenges they face and the success they find in building a strong culture of compliance within their organizations.

Privacy and security incidents that expose sensitive customer data happen all the time, and when they do, you have to act quickly and strategically. The right technology for managing your incident response process is crucial to protecting your customers and your organization against breach risks.

Last week, myself and members of the RADAR team were able to attend the IAPP CCPA Comprehensive in Fremont, California. This day-long program focused on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), with a special focus on the act’s scope, definitions, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) inspiration, and areas for further clarification.

As privacy grows in importance, so does the need for effective incident response management. Ideally, this includes consistent processes, well-established policies and procedures, collaboration across departments, and proof of compliance. The reality is often a lot different—and a lot more chaotic.

The recent webinar Anatomy of A Privacy Incident: Data Breach Response and Investigation Best Practices dove into the best practices for designing an incident response program that encourages an organization-wide culture of compliance. Panelists Andrew Reeder from Rush University Medical Center and Asra Ali from Healthscape Advisors lead a lively discussion into the ins and outs of compliance programs, covering topics ranging from common presumptions and best practices for managing the phases of incident response within an organization. 

“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?