The Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) has long been described as the floor for health care privacy laws and that states and regulators are free to enact more restrictive health care privacy laws. Last week, Washington state became the first state in the nation to codify into law broad protections for consumer health data that go well beyond HIPAA.

On March 15, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) released its proposal to amend Regulation S-P: Privacy of Consumer Financial Information and Safeguarding Customer Information (the “Proposed Amendments”), while simultaneously issuing two additional cybersecurity-related rule proposals and re-opening the comment period for its previously proposed cybersecurity risk management…

As the National Security Agency (NSA) noted in its 2022 cybersecurity yearly review, “[c]yberspace is dangerous.”

Reports of sophisticated cyberattacks and ransomware threats were prevalent in the past year. The government, manufacturers, and others further developed standards for securing digital infrastructure like 5G, cloud services, cryptography, internet protocols, and…

On March 2, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had reached a $7.8 million settlement with mental health and online counseling platform, BetterHelp, Inc. (“BetterHelp”). The FTC alleged that BetterHelp shared  consumers’ sensitive health data combined with other personal information (PI) with third party advertising platforms without first obtaining affirmative consent and allegedly contrary to certain privacy representations. The proposed order requires the company to pay $7.8 million in partial refunds to BetterHelp customers. This is the first time that the FTC has required a company to return money to its customers whose personal information was shared without consent. Going forward BetterHelp is not permitted to share sensitive health information and PI without obtaining affirmative consent from the patients and customers. BetterHelp is also required to overhaul its privacy program and request that any outside parties that received the consumers’ sensitive data delete such information.

On January 1, 2021, Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 to “better enable critical national security, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other illicit activity.” FinCEN issued the final rule on Beneficial Ownership…

Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California recently dismissed a putative class action lawsuit in which plaintiffs claimed they faced an imminent threat of future of harm in the form of identity theft and fraud because their personal information, specifically their driver’s license numbers, may have been compromised…

Amid fresh fears about data protection, on November 14th, France’s data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL) published a checklist of recommended actions travellers should take to secure phones, computers and tablets when travelling outside the European Union.

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