The Massachusetts data privacy law is in play for me everyday. The state AG has vowed to make an example of the first company that had a data breach. No one has wanted to risk taking her up on the challenge.
We have dealings with the state of Massachusetts that require us to FTP a monthly file to them that contains home addresses and social security numbers. They were mad as hell when we started sending the files encrypted on day 1 of the relationship. They had no clue how to handle it.
Yet as written the law says they could have reported us for non-compliance even though they were the ones telling us to send the files in the clear.
My counterparts in Arizona tell me their state law is a killer.
Maybe all data should be encrypted after all. Is there a way to enforce automatic encryption of data? This way, no one will ever forget to encrypt sensitive data.
Thanks for the comment. Yes: that's what I'd like to see change. I have to say, I haven't noticed moves to make the private sector comply either: I think there we'd be looking at individual law suits or class actions arising from loss or damages rather than fines -- I'm not aware that there are general legislative standards with which private enterprise needs to comply.
You can verify this to make sure it is current, but as of 2011 all state and federal data privacy laws had exceptions to compliance built into them for all levels of government.
A state university recently saw a large data theft. I can promise no one will be punished for it.
The data thefts you mention will at best result in the loss of a job.
If those events happened in the dreaded private sector the companies would be facing fines and lawsuits while some people might be facing jail time.
In the public IT sector they get a big stay out of jail card. So why should they care if there is no threat of punishment?
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Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
