How do you decide what a contract really means, at least in New York? There wouldn’t be a contract unless the parties agreed to something. When you sign a contract you think you know what the written words say; but how do you decide what they really mean? If you’re…
There are a few recent news stories that business owners, fraud investigators, and consumers should be aware of. Though not necessarily related, they point out the ever-growing need to protect digital information and the consequences for those who do not. Cybersecurity, it seems, is something that will affect everyone, eventually.…
We have been discussing what businesses can do to protect against the Federal Trade Commission commencing an enforcement action against them for allegedly failing to take reasonable precautions to ensure the safety of their customers’ private data, such as financial information, dates of birth, social security numbers, and even health…
What, exactly, should your business do to protect itself from a Federal Trade Commission enforcement action for failing to use reasonable precautions to ensure data security for your customers’ sensitive, private information? In our last post we discussed the difficulty involved in complying with a standard for which no specific…
What, exactly, can a business do to protect itself against a Federal Trade Commission enforcement action for allegedly failing to take reasonable precautions to protect its customers’ sensitive, private, digital information, such as credit card numbers, bank account information, dates of birth, and even medical records? Especially because it is…
Shadow IT, or Rogue IT, is the practice of employees reportedly improvising their way to a more productive job, without their company’s knowledge or approval, by importing cloud based tools to allow greater ease of access to company documents, bypassing firewalls, and facilitating collaboration, to enhance company performance. What could…
If a business’ privacy policy says it will protect its customers’ sensitive private digital information in certain ways, then it probably is a good idea for the business to keep that promise. The Federal Trade Commission has sued businesses for allegedly making promises in their privacy policies that they did…
In this post we are going to examine the rules used to determine whether the Federal Trade Commission’s “Reasonable Precautions” cybersecurity standard gives businesses fair notice of what they have to do to adequately protect their customers’ information from data breaches. The short answer is that businesses have to watch…
There really is no way any more to avoid technology, and all of the good and the bad that goes along with it. Recent news articles point out how technology is the one place where business, science, and the law intersect; why every business owner should stay up to date…
Most people by now have heard of the Heartbleed bug. It’s the programming flaw in one of the most common encryption methods on the internet: OpenSSL. It makes what should be secure websites, and the personal information they contain, vulnerable to hackers. It is more important, though, than just another…