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New Jersey: Health Insurance Companies Must Encrypt Data on Desktops, Laptops.

The new year brings us surprises.  According to nj.com, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has signed into law a requirement that health insurance companies encrypt client information.  As nj.com points out, The Garden State has been witness to a couple of massive data breaches in the past couple of years – incidents that could have […] read more

HIPAA Encryption: American Family Care of Birmingham Laptops Stolen.

American Family Care of Birmingham, according to phiprivacy.net, has announced that a pair of laptops stolen over this summer contained sensitive patient information.  Based on the fact that the breach has made it to the media at large suggests two things: (1) HIPAA encryption software like AlertBoot was not used on the laptops and (2) […] read more

Disk Encryption: Criminal Defense Firm Has Backup Drives Stolen From Car.

The use of crypotgrapic solutions like AlertBoot’s managed laptop encryption is not a requirement under the legal profession, as far as I know.  Of course, the use of encryption rarely is a requirement in the US, although many states’ laws and certain federal regulations make it clear that the use of encryption is required – […] read more

TrueCrypt is dead — and that might not be a bad thing.

TrueCrypt recently shut its doors and offered little explanation to its users. Was its software secure or subject to illegal activity? What were the implications of the company’s closure?  Clients depend on reliable security to keep their information safe. However, many organizations think it’s cost-efficient to use open-source data encryption software. This could end up […] read more

Disk Encryption In Education: Milford (MA) School Students Embroiled Data Breach.

According to milforddailynews.com, 3000 students who receive Medicaid reimbursements had their personal information compromised.  The data breach occurred when a laptop belonging to Multi-State Billing Services was stolen from an employee’s vehicle.  The use of full disk encryption would have prevented the data breach; furthermore, seeing how this took place in Massachusetts – and involved […] read more

Disk Encryption Legalities: Massachusetts Court Orders Lawyer To Decrypt Laptop.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (MSJC) has ordered a lawyer to decrypt his laptop computers.  The lawyer, one Leon Gelfgatt, is a criminal suspect in an ongoing case involving Russians and mortgage fraud, and as far as I can tell (as a non-lawyer), his biggest mistake was in not following the aged maxim: “don’t speak […] read more

HIPAA Laptop Encryption: St. Vincent Hospital Data Breach Affects 1100.

One of the best ways to prevent a HIPAA data breach is to use disk encryption like AlertBoot.  Not only is encryption, other than the destruction of PHI, the only way a covered entity can take advantage of the safe harbor provision found under the Breach Notification Rule (BNR), it is synonymous with data security […] read more

HIPAA Encryption: When Is Encryption Not Encryption?.

When it comes to HIPAA encryption, one of the most often asked questions is whether the solution is FIPS 140-2 compliant (or NIST approved / certified / validated).  When it comes to AlertBoot, the answer is “yes” but the reason why the question is asked so frequently is that, sometimes, an encryption algorithm doesn’t live […] read more

HIPAA Business Associate Full Disk Encryption: Management And Verification.

The HIPAA Final Omnibus Rule incorporated a number of changes that look small on paper but have huge ramifications, such as the striking of the “harm threshold” rule and requiring business associates to know and comply with HIPAA rules.  In essence, the changes strengthened the existing HIPAA legislation, closing any loopholes and ambiguities that were […] read more

FDE Security: Why Online Password Breaches Can Be Bad For Disk Encryption.

Earlier this week, I blogged on the massive Adobe password data breach.  Today, I’ve come across another password breach that impacted a considerable number of people: over 800,000 people were affected when MacRumors was attacked by hackers.  The site was using best practices when it got attacked (salted password hashes). I forgot to add last […] read more