Category Archives: Technology Risk

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Q&A: Connecticut’s New Data Breach Mandate

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Many states are enacting data breach notification laws, but Connecticut is the first state to have its insurance department get involved, enacting what is known as Bulletin IC-25.

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Wanting to know more about this recent development, I contacted Ed Goodman, chief privacy officer at Identity Theft 911. Below is our exchange:

What is Bulletin IC-25?

EG: On August 18, 2010, the Connecticut Insurance Department issued Bulletin IC-25. Bulletin IC-25 covers the handling of information security incidents that pose a potential risk to an individual’s personal health and/or financial information.

Is Connecticut the first state to issue such requirements for insurance companies doing business in the state?

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EG: While CT already has data breach notification laws, this is the first time any state Insurance Department set out specific stringent breach requirements for insurance companies doing business in its state.

Why is this rule important?

EG: Insurance companies doing business in Connecticut must know how the rule affects them and what they are required to do if they suffer a data breach. Companies with BOP (business owner policies) need to know how the new law affects their business customers, so they can address concerns and meet their customers’ needs.

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While other states (California and Massachusetts) have been on the cutting edge of data breach regulations, Connecticut is the first to establish the insurance department in an active role in data breaches specifically in the insurance industry.

Understanding breach regulations is crucial to every insurance company to:
*       Avoid sanctions or fines
*       Preserve goodwill with people who trust them with their personal data
*       Listening, then advising, educating and advocating protecting and restoring their identities

Do you see other states enacting the same sort of rule in the near future?

EG: Other state insurance departments will follow Connecticut. So all U.S. insurance companies should be prepared and knowledgeable, as well. The State of Connecticut Insurance Department’s Bulletin IC-25 is the beginning of a trend towards high scrutiny security incidents by regulators, especially in the insurance industry. Expect to see more departments following suit in the coming years.

data breach

Data Privacy in an Online World

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As social and business networking sites have taken off, data privacy has become increasingly more vulnerable. How can companies protect themselves while still taking advantage of what these new tools have to offer? In his latest online column, Joshua Gold of Anderson Kill & Olick examines the insurance and risk management measures that can prevent or mitigate unauthorized data access online.

Many forms of liability insurance protect against invasion of privacy claims. Should a policyholder be confronted by such a claim, umbrella insurance, general liability insurance, errors and omissions policies and other stand-alone specialty insurance policies should be checked for potential coverage. More proactively, if an insurance portfolio review reveals that those provisions have been written out of the businesses’ portfolio of insurance, the broker should be enlisted to get those increasingly important coverages back in.

For more, read the entire article, only on RMmagazine.com

Tweeting Earnings: Bad for Your Company?

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That’s an issue many have mixed feelings about. I, for one, think it’s a great way to relay investor information to the modern, web-loving world in a timely manner. Along with posting earnings on their websites, companies (well, some of them) are using Twitter to announce, among other news, performance numbers.

The microblogging site has seen a flood of earnings tweets for the second quarter of 2010. Some, however, are doing this better than others. IR Web Report compiled a list of 10 public companies that are using Twitter as an investor relations tool — with comments on what they’re doing right and wrong. Here’s a snapshot:

Picture 6

URL: https://twitter.com/PGNewsUS
Followers: 5,166
Apps used: Twitterfeed, CoTweet, TweetDeck
# of Earnings Tweets: 14
# of Clicks from Tweets: 75
Comments: The tweets are coming from P&G’s media relations team, so strictly speaking their activity doesn’t qualify as IR. Except it does because investors don’t discriminate. The tweets are plain vanilla, no hashtags or tickers. There’s a bit of “spin,” but mostly the tweets are informative. Still, the company’s IR department should have it’s own account. It’s hard to find the signal when sales numbers are mixed in with soap suds. The low click-thrus suggest that earnings tweets on this account don’t resonate.

Picture 7

URL: https://twitter.com/Roche_com
Followers: 4,586
Apps used: CoTweet
# of Earnings Tweets: 21
Clicks generated: 182
Comments: Only company where I had to use a calculator to add up all the various clicks to their site! Probably the best experience from a follower’s perspective. By not live tweeting the earnings call, they don’t overwhelm their followers and drive traffic to the webcast. But the greatest value comes from them referring followers to the media’s rolling coverage of the results throughout the day. From start to finish, it’s a well-managed process that is a valuable enhancement to what the company already provides on its website. The one to emulate.

Picture 8

URL: http://twitter.com/ebayinkblog
Followers: 4,638
Apps used: Blog, Seesmic
# of Earnings Tweets: 63
Clicks generated: 169
Comments: The original earnings live-tweeter, eBay continues to be a standard setter. It’s one of the few to incorporate StockTwits into its distribution. Its disclaimer at the start of earnings call live-tweeting sessions, and use of an unique hashtag for each call, are best practices. But too many tweets for my liking, but no one else complains so I’m wrong. Could say more but Richard’s already gotten a lot of ink here. He’s posted a good piece about his set-up and process.

Sure, tweeting financial performance data may be good for these large, blue-chip companies, but the same may not be true for smaller, less visible firms. According to research from the University of Michigan, small and micro-cap companies that participate in greater tweeting “during news event windows is associated with lower bid-ask spreads and greater depths.” Meaning, essentially, a lower stock price. Not good.

Tweeting earnings can have other harsh side-effects. If a company announces earnings news on other sites (such as their corporate website) first, then turns to Twitter (sometimes hours later), it is a slap in the face to the company’s loyal followers. Here are some examples of delayed earnings tweets (courtesy of IR Web Report):

  • A gold company listed both in the US and Canada issued a results release at 8:00am ET but only tweeted the news at 6:45pm ET –- a delay of 10 hours and 45 minutes.
  • A uniform company released earnings via a PR wire at 4:15pm ET and tweeted the same information 77 minutes later at 5:32pm ET.
  • A technology company issued its release at 4:15pm ET and only tweeted it at 4:43pm ET, a 28-minute period during which more than 150,000 shares were traded.
  • A health care solutions company released earnings at 4:00pm ET but didn’t mention the results on Twitter until announcing at 4:35pm ET that its conference call had started. Eventually, the results release showed up, but almost 8 hours after the fact at 11:53pm ET.
  • A networking company released earnings via a PR wire at 4:05pm ET but tweeted it only at 4:31pm ET – a 26-minute delay during which more than 100,000 shares changed hands.
  • A hard disk drive maker that released its results at 4:01pm ET but tweeted them only 24 minutes later at 4:25pm ET – a delay which saw more than 200,000 shares traded.

To investors, these are serious lapses from major corporations’ IR departments. If a company that is active on Twitter cannot manage to update its followers and investors in 140 characters or less on important information in a timely manner, how can it expect to keep such a following?

With more and more companies waking up to the power of social media, more and more sloppiness in the the Twitter and Facebook realm is visible. For companies large and small, to be complacent with such technology is to dig your own grave.

 

E-payment Co. Makes Millions Selling Customer Data

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Call me cynical, but your personal information is no longer safe . . . with any company.

Especially e-payment firm Octopus Holdings.
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The company has admitted to selling its customers’ personal information since January 2006 and making a pretty penny off it — a whopping HK$44 million ($5.7 million USD). The personal data of 1.97 million customers was sold to six different companies, including Cigna Worldwide Life Insurance.

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Octopus CEO Prudence Chan, who was speaking at a private hearing with the Hong Kong Privacy Commission, was quoted as saying the company has pledged not to provide personal data to other companies in future.

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Octopus had earlier denied it sold customer data, until it was called up by the Commission to testify at an official investigation of the company’s practices, noted a report by Apple Daily. Chan then retracted the denial.
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As one would expect, Chan is now facing pressure to resign for her mismanagement and deceiving statements.

Something good can actually come from this, however. Hong Kong’s Privacy Commissioner, Roderick Woo, proposed introducing a law to make it a criminal offense for companies to sell customers’ data. Let’s hope that proposal is taken seriously and that similar laws are proposed here in the U.

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S.

For your enjoyment (or to merely raise the level of mistrust you may feel towards businesses and/or individuals), here is a short list of instances when the shameful act of selling customer data has occurred:

Of course, these are just a few examples of stolen customer data. If there were a master list, it would be too large for this blog. Though the U.S. has enacted the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Health Insurance Portability Act and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, there is no all-encompassing law regulating the acquisition, storage or use of personal data. Let’s hope that changes soon.