The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Wednesday held a hearing where officials from leading tech and telecom firms posed key recommendations to lawmakers who seek to replace and further prohibit telecommunications equipment that may pose a security risk, including products from China-based Huawei and ZTE. Among the key suggestions was that…
Facebook has agreed to set aside $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by users who allege the social media company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), attorneys for the plaintiffs announced on Wednesday. San Francisco Federal District Court Judge James Donato must still approve the settlement, which the lawyers claim is…
The U.S. Senate last week passed a bill requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain cyber hunt and incident response teams, while the House passed one that instructs DHS to share protocols for mitigating cyber vulnerabilities. The Senate bill, S.315, aka the DHS Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act of 2019, passed by…
U.S. Senators Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Mark Warner, D-Va., have introduced federal legislation designed to protect critical technologies from supply chain attacks by China and other foreign threat actors. The bill, known as S. 2316 or the The Manufacturing, Investment, and Controls Review for Computer Hardware, Intellectual Property and Supply (MICROCHIPS) Act, would require U.S.…
On the same day that former U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller publicly testified that Russia is actively taking measures to interfere with America’s 2020 elections, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked the passage of three bills designed to boost the security of elections or the federal government. Yesterday, the senator rejected two separate bills (1, 2),…
The New York State Legislature last month passed The Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security (SHIELD) Act, which is intended to strengthen the state’s data security laws by more explicitly defining when and how businesses must notify the public and attorney general of a data breach incident. The proposed legislation, introduced by State Senator…
The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday passed its own version of the DHS Cyber Incident Response Teams Act of 2019, which would require the Department of Homeland Security to permanently maintain cyber hunt and incident response teams that help prevent and mitigate attacks on federal agencies and the private sector. Designated H.R.1158, the bill serves…
The California Assembly on May 29 passed AB 25, an amendment to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 that would exclude employees and job applicants from the legislation’s definition of “consumer.” The proposed law, which passed unanimously 77-0-3, is now in the hands of the California Senate. Under the terms of the amendment, an…
New Jersey last week officially passed Bill S-52, which amends its previous data breach notification law. Governor Phil Murphy signed the bipartisan legislation into law on May 10, after the bill sailed through the state’s General Assembly and Senate last February. The new law expands the definition of what constitutes personal information that, if exposed in…
California lawmakers Thursday blocked expansion of data privacy law handing a victory to the tech industry collection, storage and use of consumer information. The proposed expansion would have given customers the right to know what data companies were collecting from them as well as the right to delete and restrict the sell of information. The…
