Christopher Cwalina is a Partner in our Washington, D.C. office and Steven Roosa a Partner in our New York office
Data Privacy and Security Team Co-chairs Christopher Cwalina and Steven Roosa participated in a Holland & Knight webinar titled "Mobile Privacy and Security - The Current Regulatory Landscape and New Risk Threat Model."
The April 16 program discussed how companies today face a new threat model: independent researchers are testing mobile apps and website services are looking for technical privacy and security flaws. In this hyper-digital era, technologists - who are allied with regulators and the media - routinely outflank companies by using cutting-edge software and specialized networking environments to bring questionable privacy and security practices to the surface. The target companies then find themselves investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, named as defendants in a class action, or appear in The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times for all the wrong reasons.
The definition of "personal information" in today's world is no longer limited just to names, Social Security numbers and account numbers. This type of data now includes hardware device identifiers such as UDID and MAC addresses, unique identifiers assigned by software, geo-location information and network information such as IP addresses.
10 Things You Will Learn at this Webinar
- Regulatory penalties and class action risks
- Industry-specific concerns (e.g., COPPA, HIPPA, GBLA)
- The many and sometimes conflicting best practices and guidance to mitigate issues
- Privacy and security dilemmas associated with data transmission and sharing
- Privacy and security issues associated with local storage
- Privacy risks associated with the use of ad networks, Web analytics providers, social network plug-ins and hosting providers
- Techniques for testing mobile applications
- Different categories of persistent identifiers on mobile devices (as compared to websites)
- Security risks, including Wi-Fi attacks, online trust agreements and private VPNs
- Things to look out for in your "bring your own device" (BYOD) policies
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
