Tag Archives: Financial

Is Paying Ransomware Grounds for OFAC Sanctions? OFAC Says “Maybe”….

On October 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an advisory to alert companies that might pay ransomware attackers of the potential sanctions risks for facilitating ransomware payments.  In particular, the alert targeted “financial institutions, cyber insurance firms, and companies involved in digital forensics and incident response….”  While this is an advisory and does not have the force of law,… More

Minimizing Litigation Risk: What Cybersecurity Auditors Can Learn From Their Financial Statement Auditor Analogues

Data breaches – always critically important to those with responsibility for storing, transporting and protecting electronic information – have become an all-consuming topic of late. Stories about data theft dominate political headlines, boardroom discussions, and family meetings around the dinner table.  They, of course, have also been the subject of government investigations and private litigation.

The current environment is not unlike other moments in our recent past that seemed to have captured the attention of Wall Street,… More

Amendment to the Annual Privacy Notice Delivery Obligations of Financial Institutions under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act contained in the FAST Act

On December 4, 2015, President Obama signed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (the ‘‘FAST Act’’) into law. Although the FAST Act’s main focus is on improving the country’s surface transportation infrastructure, the law also contains a provision that modified the annual privacy notice requirement under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”).

Previously under the GLBA privacy regulations, financial institutions (which includes registered investment advisers,… More

Will 2011 Bring Us “Do Not Track” Legislation?

Posted below is another contribution from my colleague David Broadwin on our Emerging Enterprise Center blog about the potential for legislative change in 2011. I agree with the conclusions he draws:

  1. This is an area where bipartisan concensus is possible.
  2. The industry powers will fight against “Do Not Track” and will win that fight.
  3. Industry will accept some other form of regulation in exchange for defeating “Do Not Track.”

We could see passage of a federal data security and privacy statute,… More