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3 Tips for CCPA Enforcement During COVID-19

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As we move into the second half of 2020 and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is officially enforced, we are also in the midst of a global crisis that was not properly on the radar when the regulation was enacted in January. Organizations are now being tasked with CCPA compliance in an unexpected remote work environment, with more personal data available online than ever before. And some organizations have the added privacy challenge of contact tracing practices or applications being used internally to monitor employee health.

Even in the remote work environment, relevant companies must ensure that they are informing customers and staff about what data they are collecting, options for which personal details are being gathered, the right to say no and opt out of data collection, the right to request deletion of their information, and equal pricing despite their privacy selections.

Many businesses are still struggling to implement these guidelines and are attempting to avoid significant penalties, all while meeting uptime demands. Below are some tips from security and technology industry experts for the best ways to implement CCPA compliance:

Rely on Data Privacy Regulation Experts 

There is increasing uncertainty around many businesses’ futures, and therefore, it is critical to turn to data privacy regulation experts for advice, guidance and technological support. 

“With exponential amounts of enterprise data only increasing, ensuring data privacy involves layered, complex challenges for any business. From a cloud hosting perspective, meeting evolving compliance and privacy regulations, such as the CCPA law which is just beginning to be enforced, is one of those layers. One of the most important steps organizations can take to guarantee they are on the right path towards compliance is to rely on hosting providers that have teams experienced with privacy law regulations,” said Lex Boost, CEO of Leaseweb USA.  

While it may be tempting to rely on internal teams during the economic downturn, employee burnout in already resource-strapped IT and security teams could cost the companies more in talent loss and potential breaches/fines. Thus, companies should evaluate external providers.

Boost also said, “These providers can guide the process needed to guarantee data is managed within current and upcoming privacy regulations, allowing organizations to focus on maximizing data usage and the experience for their customers.”

Have the Right Cybersecurity Measures in Place 

Proper cybersecurity measures are often major components for achieving compliance with a variety of regulations, but especially the CCPA, which is focused on protecting sensitive data and users’ privacy rights. With major hacks making recent headlines at companies like Twitter, and ransomware attacks that threaten to exfiltrate and leak private data on the rise, companies should be on high alert.

“Nobody is safe from an attack leaking personal information, and it’s absolutely essential that correct cyber measures are in place to secure privileged accounts, in particular, as thoroughly as possible. With more information online and spread out than ever before, hackers not only have the ability to scam people, but also undoubtedly have access to private messages, security information, and other personal data,” said Torsten George, cybersecurity evangelist at Centrify.  

On top of increasing breach risks, many companies’ distributed workforces are making security preparedness even more complex. But there are solutions, according to George: “To protect organizations during this transitional remote working phase and the implementation of CCPA, it’s imperative to provide your IT administration teams, outsourced IT, and third-party vendors with secure, granular access to critical infrastructure resources regardless of location and without the hassles of a virtual private network (VPN). Privileged access management solutions can both maintain compliance and enable secure remote access to on-premises and cloud-based infrastructures, securing all administrative access with risk-aware, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and maintaining the level of compliance CCPA requires.”

Look Toward the Future 

The CCPA currently protects Californian’s privacy rights, but many legal and security experts think this could inspire a similar regulation at the federal level if it is successful.

“The CCPA is the first law of its kind in the United States, and it could set a precedent for other states. And because it applies to most companies who do business with individuals residing in California, the sweeping new law promises to have a major impact on the privacy landscape not only in California, but the entire country. The passage of a cohesive U.S. federal privacy law, one that will preempt state laws, is gaining momentum. It has strong bipartisan congressional support, and several large companies from a variety of industry sectors have come out in favor of it, some even releasing their own proposals. There are draft bills in circulation,” said Wendy Foote, senior contracts manager at WhiteHat Security.

Foote also advised, “With a new class of representatives sworn into Congress in 2019 and the CCPA effectively putting a deadline on the debate and officially being enforced in July, there may finally be a national resolution to the U.S. consumer data privacy problem. However, the likelihood of it passing in the very near future is slim. A single privacy framework must include flexibility and scalability to accommodate differences in size, complexity, and data needs of companies that will be subject to the law.”

It will take several months of negotiation for lawmakers to agree upon how the federal law would be implemented. While companies wait for the passage of a national privacy law and for it to take effect, they must continue to monitor developments in both state and federal privacy law and adapt as necessary.

Consumer privacy will continue to evolve, particularly in the time of COVID-19. Because of this, newer laws and regulations, like the European Union’s GDPR and the CCPA, must be flexible and evolve over time too.

Insulin Pumps Recalled After Hacking Vulnerability Revealed

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After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expressed concern this week that some of its internet-connected insulin pumps are vulnerable to hacking and could not be patched, medical device manufacturer Medtronic Plc has announced that they would offer an exchange for the 4,000 patients who are reportedly using the vulnerable devices. If patients are using vulnerable out-of-warranty models, Medtronic is offering a newer replacement at a discounted price, and in-warranty models will be replaced free of charge.

The Medtronic insulin pumps in question work by regularly providing insulin to the patient with the help of a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), which uses Bluetooth to connect to a computer via a CareLink USB device. This system allows patients to remotely send the device commands and share data with their health care providers. These devices are part of an industry-wide push to connect medical devices to the internet (as part of the wider internet of things, or IoT) to allow more efficient and cost-effective communication between patients and providers.

While the exact nature of the insulin pump vulnerability is unclear at this time—neither the FDA nor Medtronic has disclosed any technical details—the danger from someone exploiting the vulnerability is very serious and could be potentially fatal. According to the FDA, “an unauthorized person (someone other than a patient, patient caregiver, or health care provider) could potentially connect wirelessly to a nearby MiniMed insulin pump with cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This person could change the pump’s settings to either over-deliver insulin to a patient, leading to low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), or stop insulin delivery, leading to high blood sugar and diabetic ketoacidosis.” In a letter to patients using one of the vulnerable pumps, Medtronic confirmed the potential danger, saying that “An unauthorized person with special technical skills and equipment could potentially connect wirelessly to a nearby insulin pump to change settings and control insulin delivery.”

Fortunately, there have not been any reported cases of anyone exploiting the vulnerability, but it is not the case of such an issue affecting these devices. In 2011, a security researcher was able to hijack nearby Medtronic insulin pumps, giving him the ability to deliver potentially fatal doses of insulin to patients within 300 feet. After the vulnerability was revealed, Medtronic released a statement saying that it was working to improve their devices’ security.

This March, it was also revealed that Medtronic’s connected pacemakers, clinic programmers and home monitors were also vulnerable to hacking. In that case, Dutch security researchers discovered the security flaws, which the company reportedly initially denied before the FDA began an investigation. The agency later issued a warning about the pacemakers, and Medtronic released a patch for the software. As with the insulin pumps, there were no reported cases of anyone taking advantage of the security flaw before the fix was implemented.

Speaking to CBS News after the March incident, the FDA’s Dr. Suzanne Schwartz said, “Any device can be hacked and that’s often not understood,” adding that companies are not prepared for this reality and that “we still have a ways to go.” This week, the FDA released a set of recommendations regarding the latest insulin pump vulnerability, including a suggestion to patients: “Talk to your health care provider about a prescription to switch to a model with more cybersecurity protection.”

Such cases highlight the continuing potential risks of internet-connected medical devices. As discussed in the recent Risk Management article “Diagnosis: Risk—The Product Liability Challenges of Diagnostic Health Tech,” cyber vulnerability is only one of the many challenges for manufacturers and users of connected medical devices. These devices—especially ones that provide medical diagnostic data—have scores of built-in product liabilities that could land their manufacturers (as well as any number of other companies in the devices’ chain of distribution) in legal trouble if something goes awry.

Data Breach Risk: What’s Next?

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Ten years ago, many companies didn’t even ask about using encryption to protect data. Over the years, that has changed. More security and privacy professionals began to see it as an option in their cybersecurity defense.

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Then it eventually became a necessary component of most companies’ security strategies and the use of encrypted laptops became a condition precedent for many cyber and privacy insurance policies.

Now, after strengthening their cybersecurity with encryption and other measures, companies need to identify the next potential data exposure points where bad actors can likely turn their attention. One overlooked vulnerability is the visual display of sensitive data on screens.

Protect Visual Privacy
Not every risk management, security and IT professional is familiar with visual hacking, but they should be.

Visual hacking is the unauthorized capturing of sensitive, private or confidential information for unauthorized use. It can include visually stealing information from someone’s phone screen, viewing information left on a printer at work or other opportunities of information that is in plain sight. Very likely, it is already happening to workers in your organization.

It is commonplace for professionals who travel for work to access sensitive corporate material on the go. They could be riding on a train, plane or bus and simply open their laptops, giving those seated next to them full view of their work. In these situations, no one can be certain they are not exposing sensitive information—even something simple like a network username. It is not likely such a road warrior can be aware at all times whether another person is viewing or capturing what’s on their screen.

A study conducted by the Ponemon Institute revealed that 87% of mobile workers have caught someone looking over their shoulder at their laptop in a public space. Yet, despite this potential risk, more than half of mobile workers surveyed said they took no steps to protect important information while working in public.

Visual privacy risks don’t just exist outside the office. A worker who steps away from his or her computer or has a screen facing a public walkway can also expose highly sensitive data to onlookers.

Reduce Your Risk
As with any risk, companies should evaluate the severity and potential frequency of visual privacy exposures to better understand their risk. An insurance broker can help determine if insurance coverage is available for these risks or if insurance premium credits may be available for implementing additional safeguards.

There are other steps any organization can take to reduce the risk of visual hacking. Working with IT departments and information-security officers, companies can implement small, easy changes to existing policies and procedures.

For example, companies can deploy privacy filters on laptops or mobile devices that darken screen data when viewed by onlookers from the side. These filters can also be fitted on device screens in an office to help limit the views of potential insider threats. For example, a receptionist should likely have such a privacy screen in place if his or her screen can be viewed by visitors.

Clean-desk policies should also be in place. Such a policy can reduce the display of sensitive information in printed and electronic forms when workers are away from their desks.

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Workers should also be printing or storing sensitive information in locked areas and use crosscut shredders to destroy sensitive material.

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Finally, because visual privacy can only exist if workers adhere to policies, training is obviously important. Workers should be trained on the importance of visual privacy and being aware of their surroundings. They should also receive regular training on an organization’s privacy policies and associated safeguards.

Tackle Uncertainty with Certainty
Visual privacy may seem like an additional, unnecessary risk management burden to bear. But, like any other potential threat to sensitive data, it deserves attention. After all, a visual hack can leave no trace of when, where or how it happened—and such uncertainties may become problematic when addressing a data breach.

Dallas Alarms Hack a Warning of Infrastructure Vulnerability

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Dallas residents were wide awake and in a state of confusion late Friday night when the city’s outdoor emergency system was hacked, causing all of its 156 alarms to blast for an hour-and-a-half until almost 1:30 a.

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With some interpreting the warning as a bomb or missile, a number of residents dialed 9-1-1, but the number of calls—4,400 in all—overwhelmed the system, causing some callers to wait for up to six minutes for a response, the New York Times reported.

The alarms blasted for 90-second durations about 15 times, Rocky Vaz, the director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management, told reporters at a news conference.

Mr. Vaz said emergency workers and technicians had to first figure out whether the sirens had been activated because of an actual emergency. And turning off the sirens also proved difficult, eventually prompting officials to shut down the entire system.

“Every time we thought we had turned it off, the sirens would sound again, because whoever was hacking us was continuously hacking us,” Sana Syed, a spokeswoman for the city told the Times.

Eventually the alarms were turned off, which had to be done manually, one alarm at a time.

On Saturday afternoon the system, used for hurricanes and other warnings, was still down, but officials said they hoped to have it functioning soon.

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 They also said they had pinpointed the origin of the security breach after ruling out that the alarms had come from their control system or from remote access.

Mr. Vaz said that Dallas had reached out to the Federal Communications Commission for help and was taking steps to prevent hackers from setting off the system again, but that city officials had not communicated with federal law enforcement authorities.

Security officials have warned about the risks that such hacking attacks pose to infrastructure, which is often aging and in disrepair. Federal data shows that the number of attacks on critical infrastructure appears to have risen: to nearly 300 in 2015 from just under 200 in 2012. Attacks include a 2008 oil pipeline explosion in Turkey; a 2015 hacking of Ukraine’s power grid, leaving 200,000 people in Western Ukraine without electricity for several hours; and in 2013, hackers tried to gain control of a small dam in upstate New York. Seven computer specialists, who worked for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

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, were indicted for trying to take over controls of the dam, according to the Times.