Travis' Data Privacy Blog

Cyber crimes cost businesses $1 trillion in 2008

travissholt — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:32:20 +0000

In a recent interview in which the Director of National Intelligence stated that cyberterrorism is a huge threat to our security in the United States, he also said that businesses lost an estimated $1 trillion to cyber crimes in 2008. I can only imagine that that number increased in 2009 and 2010 and will continue to increase. I’ll discuss this more in a post later but just wanted to throw that out there in case it surprised anyone else as much as it did me!

Copyright Law and Your Blog

travissholt — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:06:02 +0000

While browsing through e-mails today, I noticed one from Legal Zoom with a really interesting subject line, “Blogging and Intellectual Property Law.” I started to think about my blog, and if I’m violating any laws when I quote other articles, post links, or share pictures other people have created. It struck me that many of my friends write blogs and may have the same questions so I wanted to share this article with you. Some of the interesting topics covered include how to obtain a copyright, who owns that copyright and what infringes on that work.

Here is a link to the post on Legal Zoom.

Security of Your Information in the Cloud

travissholt — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:29:12 +0000

I use many cloud services like Dropbox and Evernote but have been hesitant to put too much personal information on the cloud. I’ve always wondered how reliable the services are but more importantly, if I lose anyone else’s sensitive information on the cloud, would I be responsible for that or would Dropbox or Evernote in this case. Alex Williams recently wrote on the topic and I found it very relevant and interesting. While I agree with his comment that customers must determine any extra insurance that they may need to carry for information stored on a cloud, I’d be interested to hear his point of view on which insurance would respond first. If Dropbox were to lose a customer database, would they be responsible to notify those customers or would I?

Tricks on your iPad

travissholt — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:03:18 +0000

Although this is a blog about data privacy, I ran across this article today. I use an iPad with many of my clients to show presentations or within the office to share documents. Here is an article with some great tips and tricks you can use on your iPad. I am a big fan of the tips about reading .pdf files in iBooks!

Can a Worm Take Down a Nuclear Power Plant?

travissholt — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:39:10 +0000

There were recent media reports that a computer worm called the Stuxnet Worm had been released by our government to launch a cyber attack against a nuclear power plant in Iran. The worm, which was transported by using thumb drives and computers that weren’t connected to the internet, targeted the software the operated the plant. After further research, the worm actually spread to many countries and raised concerns about our own national security.

If the Stuxnet Worm or a similar worm were to attack a private business that provides critical infrastructure to the government, it could greatly hamper their ability to provide national security. The emergence of the Stuxnet Worm raises many questions about this new type of warfare. Should an international treaty be drafted? What is the best way for the government to work with the private sector to help protect our critical infrastructure?

You can read the entire report on the CRS website.

What do you think about WikiLeaks?

travissholt — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:37:59 +0000

Should Julian Assange go to jail? Is he an international terrorist? I’ve heard so many different opinions on the man and the website who is responsible for the release of so many classified documents and everyone seems to agree that what he did is wrong but what should the punishment be. Maybe you don’t even think he should be punished.

The latest news today was that Assange will be meeting with his attorney and police today to begin to figure out what happened and what if any laws he’s broken. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Who’s tracking your traffic?

travissholt — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:26:00 +0000

Looks like more people might know where you’re spending time on the web than you think… http://ow.ly/3kT9v

What’s happening on the Cloud

travissholt — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:05:43 +0000

Last week I attended the 2010 hosting and cloud computing summit put on by Tier One Research and the 451 group. What a great event and thanks to all of you who helped put on the event. I wanted to share with my readers some of the key things I learned at the event. Over the next few posts I’ll dive deeper into some of these topics.

The cloud is growing and it’s right in front of you. It’s time for your business to embrace it and figure out how to live on the cloud.

The value of data centers continues to increase as M&A activity and new data center builds continues to rise.

It is important to require your vendors and providers to take data security as seriously as you do! If you build a cloud but don’t require your SaaS or IaaS providers to provide secure infrastructure and software, how can the end user trust your cloud?

What are your thoughts on some of these comments I just made? Let me know or read my upcoming posts as I dig deeper into some of these issues.

$3,000,000 spent and nothing picked up by insurance!

travissholt — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:48:32 +0000

Sorry for the absence but things have been crazy around the office and I let blogging get left behind. While I’ve been gone there has been a ton of data breaches and other related events happening so I hope you’ve been able to keep up. While reading an article today I found one that might hit home for some of you. A data storage company suffered a breach and lost HIPAA information for a large number of patients. That information caused the client to spend over $3,000,000 dollars to comply with the breach notification laws.

The client has come back on the storage company who reported the loss to their insurance company only to find out a breach of data isn’t covered on the general liability policy. This is an instance that a cyber liability or data privacy policy would respond to. Because the broker wasn’t educated in the space, someone is going to have to come up with over $3,000,000 to reimburse the client for their expenditures. This isn’t a situation I’d want to find myself in.

To read the entire article, click here.

Google Pulling out of China

travissholt — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:13:16 +0000

Although the report is very vague right now, it looks like Google will pull out of China as previously threatened on April 10th. Google has not confirmed this report nor is it clear if they are closing all or just some of their operations there. Whether or not they close all of their operations, this is a sign that the tensions between China and Google are not diminishing.

To read the entire article, click here.