Archives: Data Security Incident Response

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2023 DSIR Report Deeper Dive: U.S. Employee Privacy Developments

By Jennifer Mitchell, Justin T. Yedor and Frederick C. Bingham on May 30, 2023 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Among the many developments in data privacy regulation that took place over the past year, new requirements relating to employee personal information in California and New York have deservedly received a lot of attention. Meanwhile, ongoing risks arising under older laws—such as the massive verdict in the first jury trial of a claim under the … Continue Reading

Deeper Dive into the Data

By Elise Elam on May 23, 2023 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Every year, BakerHostetler collects and analyzes various metrics about the incident response matters we handle. In 2022, we handled over 1,160 incidents. The most striking trends we saw across those incidents were an overall increase in the average ransom demands and payments, as well as an increase in recovery times in certain sectors. We also … Continue Reading

2022 DSIR Deeper Dive: Increased Regulatory Scrutiny of Cybersecurity Incidents

By Teresa Goody Guillén and Andreas Kaltsounis on May 17, 2022 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Our 2022 Data Security Incident Response Report discussed the increased regulatory scrutiny of cybersecurity incidents and defenses following a year of high-profile and damaging cyberattacks, including the Russia-based SolarWinds espionage campaign and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. This article summarizes several U.S. government actions aiming to improve the nation’s cybersecurity and the government’s ability to … Continue Reading

2022 DSIR Deeper Dive: Vendor Incidents

By Stefanie Ferrari on May 6, 2022 Posted in Data Breaches, Data Security Incident Response

Vendor-caused incidents continued to surge in 2021. Nearly 20 percent of the total incidents we handled last year were caused by vendors, with more than half requiring notification. As in prior years, vendor incidents involved phishing schemes and inadvertent disclosures but primarily resulted from ransomware attacks on the vendors’ systems. These ransomware attacks often involved … Continue Reading

The Impact of Data Security Incident Trends on Commercial Transactions: Part I – M&A

By Craig Carpenter on August 25, 2021 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

The 2021 edition of BakerHostetler’s annual Data Security Incident Response Report – a report based on the firm’s experience with data security incident response and litigation over the past year – features a number of important insights previously covered on this blog including trends in global breach notification, healthcare industry risks and ransomware. The Report is … Continue Reading

Incident Response and Forensic Challenges in a Work-from-Home World

By Joseph L. Bruemmer on May 18, 2021 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Our 2021 Data Security Incident Response Report discussed the challenges that organizations are facing with forensic investigations and ransomware recovery in the work-from-home world. Some of the greatest difficulties our clients encountered in the past year involved key components of incident response — communicating with employees, resetting remote user passwords, and deploying endpoint detection and … Continue Reading

The Scourge of Ransomware

By Craig A. Hoffman and Elise Elam on May 13, 2021 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Our 2021 Data Security Incident Response Report (DSIR) described ransomware as a scourge. There are stories every day about new threat actor groups and their victims. There are task forces, law enforcement initiatives, discussions by legislators about laws to help address the problem, and real-world impact from operational disruption (such as panic-buying of gas). Most … Continue Reading

Seventh Annual Data Security Incident Response Report Released – Disruption and Transformation

By Theodore J. Kobus III on April 29, 2021 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Welcome to our seventh Data Security Incident Response Report (DSIR). It has been quite a year from many perspectives. Thank you to everyone we have continued to partner and work with to create this report. We are excited to soon launch a new digital platform version, and we intend to update this version throughout the … Continue Reading

DSIR Deeper Dive: Regulatory Investigation Landscape

By Lynn Sessions, Patrick H. Haggerty and Kimberly Gordy on May 26, 2020 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

HIPAA-covered entity and business associate breaches continue to draw attention from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and other regulators. In almost every HIPAA incident we handled in 2019 involving more than 500 individuals, OCR issued a data request. While OCR investigations can be burdensome, few of them result in penalties. State attorneys general have … Continue Reading

DSIR Deeper Dive: The Ransomware Epidemic

By David Kitchen and Anthony P. Valach on May 18, 2020 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Ransomware is among the most common and persistent threats faced by organizations of all sizes. In 2019, the ransomware threat landscape worsened in several significant ways: (1) average demands increased more than tenfold; (2) all industry segments saw increases in attack frequency, with stark increases seen by education and government entities; and (3) several threat … Continue Reading

DSIR Deeper Dive: Using Compromise Threat Intelligence

By Craig A. Hoffman on May 7, 2020 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Organizations are under tremendous pressure to be agile and resilient. A key part of building a mature cybersecurity posture to enable the goals of the organization is conducting ongoing risk assessments and then implementing risk-prioritized measures. Organizations contact us during this process to ask what emerging threats to guard against. Our answer always includes a … Continue Reading

Sixth Annual Data Security Incident Response Report Released – Managing Enterprise Risks and Leveraging Data in a Digital World

By Theodore J. Kobus III on April 30, 2020 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

We are excited to present our sixth Data Security Incident Response Report (DSIR). We hope this issue finds you safe and healthy while working from home (WFH). Each year, we talk about last year’s trends and where we think the current year is taking us. Ransomware was, and continues to be, a big issue. We … Continue Reading

Deeper Dive: GLBA-Regulated Financial Institutions Reduce Your Cybersecurity Risk With Rigorous Oversight of Third-Party Service Providers

By Eulonda Skyles on May 8, 2019 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Financial institutions that are subject to the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act (GLBA) can find practical tips that address their unique data security challenges in the 2019 Data Security Incident Report (DSIR). It appears that money remains a strong motivating force for many threat actors. According to the 2019 report, finance and insurance remain among the sectors … Continue Reading

Deeper Dive: Security Incident Mitigation Strategy: Effective Negotiation of Technology Contract Limitations of Liability

By Janine Anthony Bowen on May 7, 2019 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

There is always significant negotiation around caps on liability when negotiating a contract with a technology vendor. If the vendor will have access to the personal information of its customers’ end users (regardless of whether the end users are employees or customers), treatment on caps on liability take on heightened importance. In fact, limitations of … Continue Reading

Deeper Dive: The Scourge of O365 Incidents

By David Kitchen, M. Scott Koller and BakerHostetler on April 11, 2019 Posted in Cybersecurity, Data Security Incident Response

A Growing Menace 2018 saw a continuation of companies moving toward cloud-based email systems. Phishing incidents targeting those systems followed suit. Fully one-third of incidents addressed by our incident response team in 2018 involved unauthorized access to an online email account. Phishing attacks continued to dominate the types of cyberattacks organizations experienced in 2018, owed, … Continue Reading

Fifth Annual Data Security Incident Response Report Released – Managing Enterprise Risks in a Digital World

By Theodore J. Kobus III on April 3, 2019 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

We are excited to release the fifth edition of our annual Data Security Incident Response Report. This year’s report provides metrics from the 750+ potential incidents our team led clients through in 2018, as well as “Take Action” segments that feature insights from our team on key response items. Because it is our Report’s fifth … Continue Reading

Do You Need a Chief Digital Risk Officer (or Digital Risk Working Group)?

By Craig A. Hoffman on August 6, 2018 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

Axioms are common in the privacy and security space. One that has been popping up with more frequency is “privacy and security is an enterprise risk that requires an enterprise-wide effort to appropriately address.” It is easy to say, hard to execute and absolutely necessary.… Continue Reading

Deeper Dive: Using Response Time Metrics to Drive Incident Response Preparedness & Response Improvement

By Craig A. Hoffman on May 1, 2018 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

One of the most important metrics in our report is the incident response (IR) timeline, which tracks the average time it takes companies to detect, contain, fully investigate, and provide notification of the incident to individuals. The metric is valuable because it helps entities identify areas where they can improve before an incident occurs and … Continue Reading

Deeper Dive: Forensics

By Will R. Daugherty on April 24, 2018 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

A company’s ability to quickly and effectively conduct a forensic investigation is often critical to limiting the impacts of a data security incident, determining the scope of the incident and developing an effective communications plan. In BakerHostetler’s 2018 Data Security Incident Response Report, we analyzed over 560 data security incidents that we worked on in … Continue Reading

Deeper Dive: Take Action to Close the Largest Cause of Data Security Incidents – Your Employees

By David Kitchen on April 17, 2018 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

If you work at a typical company, employee actions and inadvertent disclosures present the greatest threat to the security of your data. Therefore, providing proper training and technical safeguards is one of the most important means to enhance your company’s security profile. In BakerHostetler’s newly-released 2018 Data Security Incident Response Report, we assisted our clients … Continue Reading

Deeper Dive: Key findings From Baker Hostetler’s 2018 Data Security Incident Report

By Laura E. Jehl on April 10, 2018 Posted in Data Security Incident Response

In our 2018 Data Security Incident Report, “Building Cyber Resilience: Compromise Response Intelligence in Action,” we identify and analyze the most important trends and takeaways from the more than 560 incidents we handled last year. These incidents affected nearly every industry and impacted anywhere from a single individual to millions of people. Our report distills … Continue Reading