The Risks and Issues of Data Breaching Privacy

Data security represents both a new global market opportunity to enhance the insurance coverage and a new risk especially for independent insurance agencies that may not be compliant with data security laws to protect their own companies from data breaches.

Data Breaching is one of the hot “white collar criminal ” probably for the past four years. A lot of legislation has been passed, and data security breaches have become a main street type exposure, so clients are a little more aware that a breach could occur as compared to previous. With the increasing business over the Internet and the presence of Wi-Fi (wireless Internet access), it’s virtually impossible to secure all of that information. In other words, though Electronic evidence can be dynamite, the casual nature of email can expose critical evidence.

Encryption might be one of the most widely used method to protect the data held on file servers, Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and databases. Encryption helps to reduce the likelihood of enterprise data loss or data breach incident. Oftentimes, the data security breaches are a result of not having the appropriate procedures in place to prevent employee mischief. Company found that information technology folks in their company doing the work don’t have security background checks but they’re given access to the systems. So we find that a lot of security breaches are done by insiders which should have been prevented.

Some of the renowned data breach protection company provides data breach solutions, risk assessment, forensic investigation and fully managed victim identity restoration to corporations, financial institutions, and government agencies. They have protect millions of individuals from identity theft and authored the Identity Crime Victim’s Bill of Rights.

Any organization that fails to achieve full compliance which suffers a data breach could face substantial imputed and unnecessary costs, class action litigation, and enforcement actions by state or federal authorities. Companies that take proactive measures by resorting resources with extensive expertise in privacy, compliance, and breach response helps to minimize the risk of a security incident and the associated costs. Regulations aside, a data breach can hurt an organization’s credibility and can carry huge medical and financial risks to the people whose data is lost.

Breach Prevention program could help organizations to review all aspects of PHI security and data breach readiness, including and not limited to the below:

o Proprietary Risk Self-Assessment – a powerful analytical tool which help detecting existing data risk hot-spots and determining how well protected the exposures are at current security levels.
o Privacy Awareness Training Courseware helps organizations to meet the requirement for ongoing education for their employees who must and are handling sensitive personal information.
o Incident Response Plan is designed for facility decision makers in the process of identifying roles/responsibilities and organizing policies/procedures for responding to a data breach.
o Legislative Updates ensure clients stay up-to-date on data breach notification and related privacy regulations.

At times, forensic accountants could be at risk of breaching privacy and confidentiality laws unwittingly, as they investigate problems ranging from fraud to insolvency which need to access corporate information. Forensic accountants who look at personal information stored electronically could be breaking data protection rules, according to some ID breaching experts. Therefore the first and foremost importance is the caution to check with legal counsel. Check with the company’s legal counsel and a local attorney on state and federal laws before launching a financial crime investigation.

All these are necessary when certain investigative measures need to be taken that may violate employee workplace rights or peoples’ constitutional rights. There are also special procedures for the gathering and handling of financial crime evidence. This is a highly complex area of crime-fighting where an investigation can easily backfire, and you might be exposing yourself and the organization to possibly more harm than existed before you launched the investigation. Therefore a forensic accountant should avoid breaking the rules while they are out there investigating crime cases found breaking some rules.