Congress established the Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force (the “Task Force”) in the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 (the “Act”) to address the challenges the health care industry faces when securing and protecting itself against cybersecurity incidents.  While all health care delivery organizations have a responsibility to secure their systems and patient data, many organizations face significant resource constraints, which hinders their ability to do so.  As a result, the public has seen an increase in ransomware attacks and large privacy breaches, which inevitably affects patient care.

We previously reported on the FCC’s 2016 Privacy Order, “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services” impacting Internet service providers’ data privacy practices and obligations and the corresponding timeline for compliance. Intervening events, however, have made the rules imposed by the 2016 Privacy Order moot. On June 26, 2017, the FCC adopted a new order providing guidance on reinstating the pre-2016 Privacy Order regulations. This order was issued pursuant to a joint resolution of Congress under the Congressional Review Act, signed by the President on April 3, 2017, disapproving the FCC’s 2016 Privacy Order. As a result, the 2016 Privacy Order has “no force or effect.” FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, stated that the purpose of the new order is to “simply make clear that the privacy rules that were in effect prior to 2016 are once again effective.”

Proskauer has released a white paper on “What Employers Need to Know about Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.” As you may know, on April 14, 2016, the European Parliament approved the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which will replace the EU’s current data privacy standard and begin to…

This post provides an update as to the current status of official GDPR-related guidance. With a little under a year remaining until the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes enforceable, companies are on the lookout for any interpretive guidance from EU or member state authorities that will help them focus their compliance efforts. The EU’s Article 29 Working Party (WP29) thus far has adopted guidelines relating to data portability, the identification of lead supervisory authorities, and the role of data protection officers, and has issued draft guidelines on data protection impact assessments (DPIAs, also known as “Privacy Impact Assessments”). Additionally, EU member states – led by Germany –are beginning to pass laws meant to complement the GDPR and legislate in areas the GDPR leaves to the member states.  These laws also provide some clues as to how the GDPR will take effect on a country-by-country basis.

China’s new Cybersecurity Law is one of the most important pieces of privacy and cybersecurity legislation we’ll see this year, and companies of all sizes need to be aware of its requirements – regardless of whether or not they have a physical presence in China. The new law goes into effect on June 1, 2017, meaning that companies have a few weeks left to familiarize themselves with the law and work on achieving compliance.  However, simply reviewing the law itself is not enough: in order to truly understand its requirements, it is important to step back and view the law in the context of the Chinese legal system more generally.  This post provides a breakdown of this complex new law and its implications for businesses, and provides additional context needed to understand the Chinese privacy law landscape from a more holistic perspective.

In April 2017, the New York Department of Financial Services (the “DFS”) released guidance on interpreting 23 NYCRR Part 500, its recently promulgated regulation that requires banks, insurance companies and other financial services institutions regulated by the DFS to adopt broad cybersecurity programs (the “Regulation”), in the form of…