Technology & Privacy

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The developing coronavirus pandemic affects businesses and personnel within the state and elsewhere.  With more New Yorkers working from home, there are more opportunities for cyberattacks through unsecure remote connections and the public concern growing each day. The New York SHIELD (“Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security”) Act was signed to law on July 25, 2019.  It is an amendment to New York’s data breach notification law.  The SHIELD Act provides a number of changes that we reported last year, including expanding the definitions of “private information” and “breach.”  The definition of “private information” now covers emails…
With the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), cybersecurity criminals and scammers are ramping up their efforts to target vulnerable employers and workforces. The FTC announced today that since January they have received more than 7,800 fraud complaints from consumers related to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the FTC isn’t slowing down either. Even with the FTC having to change its own procedures due to COVID-19, the FTC has been publishing guidance on COVID-19 scams and also sending out warning letters to sellers of false treatments.…
An interesting New York Times article last week posited that governments’ use of digital surveillance techniques for the COVID-19 response – such as the tracking of geolocation to gauge quarantine restrictions – would lead to more pervasive digital tracking in the future. On a related note, there have been reports of an increased use of facial recognition technologies as governments use digital tools to respond to the outbreak. These developments bring to mind some interesting questions: In the future, given our collective experience with this invisible foe, will there be a move away from contact-based security and access control systems…
On March 19, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), issued Guidance on the essential critical infrastructure workforce needed to ensure national resilience during the COVID-19 response. CISA developed its initial list of critical infrastructure workers to help state and local officials determine which operations are essential to critical infrastructure as they attempt to balance public health with the need for continued operations in essential areas. Along with more obvious critical infrastructure workers in sectors such as energy, transportation, public works, communications and healthcare, CISA’s advisory list expressly included blockchain workers involved in the…
This alert focuses on the ongoing and developing privacy issues that have arisen for employers and healthcare providers communicating about the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19).  Specifically, we will discuss the steps that employers and healthcare companies need to consider when communicating to its employees, the media and general public, and government officials when an individual has been diagnosed with the coronavirus or may have been exposed to the coronavirus.…
With the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), many organizations are requiring or permitting employees to work remotely.  This post is intended to remind employers and employees that in the haste to implement widespread work-from-home strategies, data security concerns cannot be forgotten. Employers and employees alike should remain vigilant of increased cybersecurity threats, some of which specifically target remote access strategies.  Unfortunately, as noted in a prior blog post, cybercriminals will not be curtailing their efforts to access valuable data during the outbreak, and in fact, will likely take advantage of some of the confusion and communication issues that…
As part of the response to the outbreak of COVID-19, many organizations are working on contingency and business continuity plans that include an all-employee “work-from-home” scenario.  If it becomes necessary to implement such a plan, all employees of the organization will access the organization’s networks and systems remotely. Unfortunately, many organizations that are testing these plans are discovering that that their remote access technologies may not be able to handle, without significant degradation in performance, the volume of activity this will generate.  Indeed, given the complex host of business applications and collaboration tools that many businesses employ, many entities may…
Beyond the human toll of the current global health crisis, the coronavirus outbreak is having serious economic repercussions to the global economy and the supply chains on which it depends. Dun & Bradstreet reported, “at least 51,000 (163 Fortune 1000) companies around the world have one or more direct or Tier 1 suppliers in the impacted regions, and at least five million companies (938 Fortune 1000) around the world have one or more Tier 2 suppliers in the impacted region.” Factory closings, transportation restrictions and general concerns about a potential pandemic are causing shortages of critical supplies and employees,…