Reprinted with permission from HB Litigation. Fire alarms sounded at the waterfront luxury hotel in Southern California, bringing an early end to the speaker’s presentation. He was addressing a 200-person audience assembled to learn about avoiding, mitigating and insuring the risks of cyber attacks. The hotel sirens turned out to be a false alarm, but…

A Q&A with Lynn Sessions of Baker Hostetler LLP
Now that the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is law, states potentially now have cyber public entity liability exposure, due to their role in managing PHI in connection with the healthcare exchanges, the data hubs that will centralize and route private information through government agencies and related businesses. This new model has already led to privacy data breach incidents, well before the act went into effect this past October (see example). To sort through the complications the ACA poses to public entities, I spoke with Lynn Sessions, counsel at Baker Hostetler LLP.

A Q&A with Ozzie Fonseca of Experian® Data Breach Resolution
Organizations are increasingly addressing cyber risk, and Ponemon Institute’s new study titled “Managing Cyber Security as a Business Risk: Cyber Insurance in the Digital Age” explores the current attitudes business leaders have toward managing security threats and the steps they are taking to minimize them. I spoke with Ozzie Fonseca, senior director, Experian Data Breach Resolution, about what the survey uncovered.

A Q&A with Patrick Townsend of Townsend Security
Encryption is one of the best defenses against data loss, giving an organization some assurances that unauthorized interlopers won’t be able to access encrypted information, no matter where it resides. Moreover, in some cases the organization may not have to notify the victims of a breach because encryption provides safe harbor. Yet many organizations still choose to not encrypt their data, at their peril. I spoke with Patrick Townsend, CEO of Townsend Security, about the benefits of encryption and key management.

A Q&A with Branden Williams, of Sysnet Global Solutions
Many insured organizations are not as prepared for cyber breach incidents as they could be. Without a centralized logging system known as SIEM in place, it can be exceedingly difficult and expensive to investigate and remedy a breach situation. I talked to Branden Williams, executive vice president of Sysnet Global Solutions about SIEM and its advantages.

A Q&A with James Giszczak of McDonald Hopkins, LLC
The loss of trade secrets through a data breach can have major implications both financially and legally for an organization. I asked attorney James Giszczak to share his insight about the threats today’s companies are facing and how they can better fortify their intellectual property protections.

A Q&A with Ramon Peypoch of McAfee, Inc.
One of the most insidious enemies of data security is advanced malware. But what are these advanced persistent threats, and how can companies protect themselves from them? I asked Ramon Peypoch, VP of Web Protection at McAfee to share his expertise.

A Q&A with Tim Ryan of Kroll The second in our ongoing series on IP theft, this Q&A with Tim Ryan of Kroll explores the current situation companies are facing vis à vis data security and intellectual property, and what they can do to better arm against growing threats. A former FBI supervisor for the largest cyber squad in the United States, Ryan is currently the head of Kroll’s cyber practice which handles incident response, breach investigations and risk assessment.

A Q&A with James Prendergast and Chris DiIenno of Nelson, Levine, De Luca and Hamilton
First put into effect in 2000, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was designed to protect the PII of children under age 13 online. In July, 2013, the regulation was revised to address more recent ways that children use the internet—namely, through social networking, apps and mobile devices. To better grasp the new amendment’s implications for businesses that collect the PII of children online, I talked to Jim Prendergast and Chris DiIenno, partners in the Privacy and Data Security Group at Nelson Levine De Luca and Hamilton, LLC.

A Q&A with Christopher Pogue of Trustwave
The Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has been in place for a long time. Yet we keep hearing about breaches at PCI-compliant organizations. To learn why that is and what companies can do to better protect themselves, we spoke to Christopher Pogue, CISSP, CEH, CREA, GCFA, QSA, a director at Trustwave’s SpiderLabs.