Pa. district court awards $68M in class action over improper access to personal records

(Jun 3, 2019) According to Jackson Lewis' Workplace Privacy, Data Management & Security Report blog, a Pennsylvania district court awarded $1,000 to 68,000 members of a class suit that claimed Bucks County and other municipal institutions violated state laws by making their criminal records public. The case began in 2012 when Daryoush Taha alleged that the county’s publicly accessible inmate search tool included access to an online database with criminal history records for all current and former Bucks Co... Read More

Ga. Supreme Court rules state is not obligated to protect citizens' information

(May 29, 2019) Infosecurity reports Georgia's Supreme Court has ruled that state government is not required to protect the personal information of its citizens. The Supreme Court dismissed plaintiff Thomas McConnell's claims of negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and invasion of privacy against the state's Department of Labor, which allegedly mishandled the personal information of 4,457 benefit claimants. "McConnell has not shown that the Department owed him or the other proposed class members a duty to prote... Read More

Why Cross-Device Tracking May Put Company Data at Risk

(May 20, 2019) This article from SHRM looks at how cross-device tracking affects HR and IT professionals who are tasked with keeping data secure. The article breaks down cross-device tracking and offers ways to help combat the risks involved.  Click To Download... Read More

Australia examines legality of workplace biometrics

(May 16, 2019) A wrongful termination case in Australia has called into question whether the use of biometrics in the workplace violates the country's Privacy Act, the Society for Human Resource Management reports. An Australian employee was fired for refusing to submit to biometric scanning at work, citing concerns about the collection of his personal information. After being fired for noncompliance and having the Fair Work Commission deny a claim of unfair dismissal, the employee successfully filed an appeal... Read More

Job recruitment site exposes 13.7M user profiles

(May 2, 2019) Ladders, a U.S. job recruitment website, has endured a security lapse that exposed the profiles of 13.7 million users and the information of 379,000 recruiters, TechCrunch reports. An Amazon-hosted Elasticsearch database, which held years' worth of Ladders data, was running without a password for an unknown period of time before recently being shut down within an hour of Ladders being informed of the lapse. Names, email addresses and employment histories were some of the personal information exp... Read More

GCHQ to host all-female cyber courses this spring

(Feb 14, 2019) The U.K. Government Communications Headquarters announced it will conduct all-female CyberFirst Defenders courses this spring, BBC News reports. The National Cyber Security Centre found nearly 90 percent of cybersecurity employees are male. In order to bring more balance to the field, the GCHQ will open up 600 spots for women to take part in the cybersecurity courses. "Women only make up a small proportion of the global cyber-workforce, and throughout GCHQ and the NCSC we are looking to address ... Read More

Survey: Non-desk employees use messaging apps, even without HR's knowledge

(Jan 31, 2019) A survey conducted by Speakap found most non-desk employees use messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, Adweek reports. Speakap defines non-desk employees as staff members who work at retail stores, hotels and restaurants. Of the 1,000 non-desk employees polled, 53 percent said they use messaging apps for work-related communications up to six times a day, with 16 percent believing their company’s human resources department did not know of such use. Speakup states compani... Read More