CYBERSECURITY

Microsoft Report Highlights Attacks Against Healthcare Organizations

On October 22, 2024, Microsoft issued a threat trend research report entitled “US Healthcare at risk: Strengthening resilience against ransomware attacks.” In it, Microsoft declares that ransomware attacks against the healthcare sector are “emerging as one of the most significant” cybersecurity threats to healthcare organizations. The attack surface of hospitals “grows more complex” with digital operations, which heightens “their vulnerability to attacks. Read More

ENFORCEMENT + LITIGATION

Ally Financial Faces Class Actions Over Data Breach

Ally Financial Inc., a digital financial services company, faces two class action lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina related to an April 2024 data breach. The suits allege that Ally failed to secure customers’ personal information, including Social Security and auto account numbers. Read More

CT AG Settles Data Breach Case with Guardian Analytics

Connecticut Attorney General (CT AG) William Tong announced on October 21, 2024, that his office has settled a data breach case against Guardian Analytics, Inc. for $500,000. The data breach affected the personal information of 157,629 Connecticut residents. The CT AG alleged that Guardian Analytics failed to implement reasonable and appropriate data security across its systems and allowed threat actors to gain access to the data, which was a violation of Connecticut’s data privacy and consumer protection laws. Read More

Four Companies Settle Allegations of Deceptive Cyber Disclosures with SEC

This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged four public companies for alleged deceptive cyber disclosures: Unisys Corp., Avaya Holdings Corp., Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., and Mimecast Limited. Read More

DATA PRIVACY

Neural Data Included in CCPA Amendments

As we outlined in our previous blog article, California recently became the second state to enact a law safeguarding consumer brain data, following a similar law passed by Colorado in April. Both state laws prevent the sale or unauthorized sharing of data generated by consumer neurotechnology products. Under these new state privacy laws, companies must disclose the types of brain data they collect and their uses and disclosures of it. Read More

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artists’ Copyright Infringement Suit Against AI Companies Can Proceed

In 2023, visual artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz filed a class action lawsuit against several artificial intelligence (AI) companies, alleging that the companies’ various AI models violated copyright law by using the artists' work in their training data sets. In ruling on the defendants' motion to dismiss in August 2024, Judge William Orrick, in the Northern District of California, permitted the plaintiffs' copyright claims to proceed. Read More

PRIVACY TIP

Privacy Tip #418 - New Phishing Scheme Uses Scarce Weight Loss Drugs as Hook

Scammers are always looking for new ways to dupe victims. With the advent of GLP-1 weight loss drugs and their popularity, it has been reported that it is more difficult to obtain weight loss drugs, and they are in high demand. Scammers are using this craze to find vulnerable victims desperate to find drugs and cheat them out of money. Find out more in this week's Privacy Tip. Read more