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November 2015

Aggressive Cybersecurity Strategy Offers Greater Information, Protection

When it comes to cybersecurity, there are two strategies. The first is reactive and is put into motion once security protocols have failed. The second, the proactive approach, can take you down the proverbial rabbit hole and into a world of intelligence gathering that puts you across the virtual table from those who might be coming for your secured data. At least this is how Alert Logic’s Stephen Coty described the strategy options to attendees of the 17th Cloud Expo.

The longtime cybersecurity expert warned that system breaches are not the only threats posed by those with access to sensitive information. He used the case of the recent Ashley Madison breach, in which the e-mails of users were compromised, as an example of how a bad actor could leverage an employee’s organizational data as a tool for blackmail. “It raises questions for us as security people. How do we get proactive about that?” Coty said. “We have to search those data dumps as quickly as possible when they come out because we need to know if we have any exposure out there.” While comprehensive security tools are considered a necessary best practice, they are often not enough to completely eliminate the threat of data loss without additional efforts.

A New Turn in the Safe Harbor Roller Coaster

[Commentary] The roller coaster of developments affecting the Safe Harbor framework shows no signs of slowing down. It has taken a couple of years since Edward Snowden's revelations for the train to reach to its highest point, but once the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on the Schrems case, we knew it would be a bumpy ride.

In the past weeks, most of the attention has focused on the EU data protection authorities, which are now more emboldened than ever and keen to capitalize on the ECJ's decision to tighten the regime affecting international dataflows. The European Commission's communication of Nov 6 to the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, coupled with its practical guidance, represents yet another turn in this uncertain journey. Here are some practical conclusions can we draw from the Commission's position.

[Eduardo Ustaran, CIPP/E, is a partner in the global Privacy and Information Management practice of Hogan Lovells]

Seniors Technology Survey: 80 Percent Would Use More ICT With Tech Support

Eight in 10 seniors would make greater and more frequent use of information and communications technology (ICT) if they had ready access to technical support and assistance, according to in-house customer-based market research carried out by Bask. Well over 8 in 10 survey respondents agreed that ICT can help them live longer in their own homes. Four in 10 (39 percent) said they felt only somewhat connected or not connected at all to their families. Among this group, nearly 8 in 10 (78 percent) agreed that being able to use ICT would help them connect with family and friend to a greater degree. Bask’s findings reinforce results of other research, such as Brookdale Senior Living’s ¨Rewiring Aging,¨ in which researchers found that more than one-quarter (27 percent) of seniors over 80 are ¨virtual shut-ins.¨

Release of the Full TPP Text After Five Years of Secrecy Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights

Trade offices involved in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have finally released all 30 chapters of the trade deal, a month after announcing the conclusion of the deal in Atlanta. Some of the more dangerous threats to the public's rights to free expression, access to knowledge, and privacy online are contained in the copyright provisions in the Intellectual Property (IP) chapter, which we analyzed based on the final version leaked by Wikileaks two weeks ago and which are unchanged in the final release.

Now that the entire agreement is published, we can see how other chapters of the agreement contain further harmful rules that undermine our rights online and over our digital devices and content. Now that we finally have the final text of this agreement, we'll be digging deeper into the implications of this sprawling agreement in the days and weeks to come. However, if there's one thing we can take away from this, it's that the TPP's secretive, lobbyist-controlled policymaking process has led to a deal that upholds corporate rights and interests at the direct expense of all of our digital rights. We’re going to do all we can to ensure this agreement never gets ratified by the United States Congress or any other country that is a party to this deal. To do so, government officials need to hear from us loud and clear that we won’t stand by and let them trade away our rights to powerful multinational corporations.

States Need to Focus on the Broadband Internet Ecosystem in Enforcement Matters

[Commentary] During the week of Nov 9, three of the leading US broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) -- Verizon, Cablevision Systems and Time Warner Cable -- will be filing responsive reports with New York State’s attorney general’s office. That office, under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, launched a recent probe regarding whether these ISPs did not deliver the actual broadband Internet speeds that had been advertised to consumers. The ISP responses, which are expected to vigorously contradict the allegations, will present items that have specifically been requested for government review, such as proof of disclosures made to customers as well as any testing around Internet speeds.

The New York State Attorney General’s inquiry may be looking too narrowly at only a single element of one part of a complex ecosystem -- speed of delivery (which itself may be affected by such individualized factors as the quality and placement of an in-home router, along with the size of a particular residential dwelling unit). If other states frame their inquires in similar ways, they may repeat the same conceptual mistake of equating broadband Internet speed with broadband Internet value. Instead, the better approach would be to begin any future investigation with the broadband Internet ecosystem as the central principle upon which all current and future policy discussions need to account for; anything less cannot help but be piecemeal. Without this essential holistic view, state law enforcement officials may be able to achieve quick fixes, but they also may create negative unintended consequences in the larger broadband Internet ecosystem at play.

[Stuart N. Brotman teaches at Harvard Law School and is the author of Net Vitality: Identifying the Top-Tier Global Broadband Internet Ecosystem Leaders]

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