Yesterday the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced "the final release of Special Publication 800-145, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing." NIST's definition of Cloud Computing has been very influential in setting tent pegs in the ground to cabin the scope and discussion of the often nebulous definition of cloud computing.
As social media and networking continue to revolutionize modern-day marketing and become the norm for organizations of all types, shapes and sizes, it is even more important to adequately address the legal risks associated with social media use. In Part One of our Legal Implications series, we laid out some background and identified key areas of legal risk. In the next few posts InfoLawGroup is going to look deeper at some of these risks. In this post we explore some of the privacy legal issues that companies should address if they want to leverage social media.
Publicly traded businesses now have yet another set of guidelines to follow regarding security risks and incidents. On October 13, 2011 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Division of Corporation Finance released a guidance document that assists registrants in assessing what disclosures should be made in the face of cyber security risks and incidents. The guidance provides an overview of disclosure obligations under current securities laws - some of which, according to the guidance, may require a disclosure of cyber security risks and incidents in financial statements.
On October 10, 2011, Governor Brown signed into law a bill, AB22, that restricts the use of consumer credit reports in the hiring and promotion process.
Omer Tene, Managing Director, Tene & Associates is reporting on the court's decision:In a highly important decision, the Tel Aviv District Court annulled a forum selection clause in a clickwrap contract, holding the user was not sufficiently aware of the choice of foreign forum or of the fact he was contracting with a foreign company; and had not clearly consented to such choice.
Earlier this week we blogged about Senator Blumenthal's (D-CT) proposed Personal Data Protection and Breach Accountability Act of 2011. Today, InfoLawGroup partner Boris Segalis spoke on Fox Live about the advantages of federal information security legislation.
Late last week Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Personal Data Protection and Breach Accountability Act of 2011, S.1535, that if ultimately passed would levy significant penalties for identify theft and other "violations of data privacy and security," criminalize as felonies the installation of software that collects "sensitive" PII without clear and conspicuous notice and consent, and specifies requirements that companies collecting or storing the online data of more than 10,000 individuals adhere to data storage guidelines, including auditing the information security practices of contractors and third party business entities. Penalties include up to $10,000 per violation per day up to a maximum of $20,000,000 per violation per individual.
Dan Or-Hof, a privacy and technology partner at the Israeli law firm Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer is reporting that new regulations and orders introduced by Israel's Ministers Committee for Biometric Applications set the ground for a two-year biometric IDs issuance trial period. The Ministry of Home Affairs is making final preparations to start issuing the IDs that will contain encoded fingerprints and facial image, and will be stored in a national database. A campaign led by privacy activists against the controversial biometric database has failed to yield a positive result so far.
California's infamous SB 1386 (California Civil Code sections 1798.29 and 1798.82) was the very first security breach notification law in the nation in 2002, and nearly every state followed suit. Many states added their own new twists and variations on the theme - new triggers for notification requirements, regulator notice requirements, and content requirements for the notices themselves. Over the years, the California Assembly and Senate have passed numerous bills aimed at amending California's breach notification law to add a regulator notice provision and to require the inclusion of certain content. However, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bills on multiple occasions, at least three times. Earlier this year, State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) introduced Senate Bill 24, again attempting to enact such changes. Yesterday, August 31, 2011, Governor Brown signed SB 24 into law.