Darkreading.com:
...The logical part of my brain loves that the Massachusetts privacy law tasks companies with understanding their data security risks. Risk is something they understand. The regulation specified that you will build a security plan around challenges specific to your organization's risk, looking at both the data and systems that manage data. There is no encryption loophole for companies to excuse sloppy security. They will have a tough time blaming data theft on product vendors if they select the wrong product or scapegoat IT if they do not respond to discovered risks. I think this law makes meaningful advancements in data security requirements, and I like to think that companies that make money from personal information should have some custodial responsibilities to the safety and security of other people's information.
So I was thinking, "Great, I'll write a justification piece for database security." In practice, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, passwords, and other personal information are being stored in relational databases. 201 CMR 17.00, HIPAA, and many of the regulations don't call out database security specifically, but relational databases are the primary storage management system for this data. My intention when starting this blog post was to outline a plan to understand risk, and outline how auditing, assessment, DAM, encryption, access controls, and application programming can be applied to meet different threat types. I may still do that, but the question remains whether companies will actually take action to understand the risks. Is this law actually a business driver?
If you want to see a security program outline for meeting Massachusetts data privacy standard 201 CMR 17.00, then I would be happy to post here on the blog. (Let me know via the "Comments" box below).
But I think a discussion about whether this law will be taken seriously needs to happen before we decide how to comply.
Adrian Lane is an analyst/CTO with Securosis LLC, an independent security consulting practice. Special to Dark Reading.
[link]
posted by: gqjournal
Comments