Monthly Archives: February 2018

New SEC Guidance Addresses Disclosure Requirements for Breach Events

As the SEC has made clear on numerous occasions over the past year, cybersecurity will continue to be a major enforcement priority under the Commission’s new leadership.  As we have previously covered, one new area of potential enforcement activity that the SEC has warned about concerns the failure of public companies to make disclosures regarding material cyber events.  While the SEC had previously provided some guidance to publicly traded companies about when to disclose such events,… More

States Continue to Upgrade Data Privacy Laws – A Look at North Carolina

A recent Security Breach Report published by the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office provides a snapshot of the various data security threats currently riling the state’s public and private sectors.  Since 2006, the year North Carolina businesses and government entities became statutorily obligated to report breaches to the Attorney General’s Office, reported data breaches have skyrocketed from 86 to over one thousand.  In turn,… More

Schrems v. Facebook: The Show Must Go On In Vienna, But Now As A One-Man Show

Recently, Austrian privacy activist Maximilian Schrems won a partial victory in his continuing battles with Facebook. We discuss that case below. But first, we review his prior tilts with Facebook.

Schrems in Ireland’s Courts

When Schrems was a college student, he heard a Facebook representative at a conference talk about European privacy rules with a lack of consideration that shocked him. Since then, Schrems has been fighting Facebook on many fronts.… More

Changes Afoot at the FTC – A New Slate of Commissioners

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has long been the trend-setter for what constitutes reasonable behavior in protecting data privacy.  It does so through its broad Section 5 authority, which federal courts have held allows the FTC to regulate the data privacy space, but the breadth of which is under challenge.  With news that the Trump Administration has nominated a slate of four new Commissioners to head the agency —… More