Law Commons^™

The Need For Cyber Resilience Of Space Assets: Law And Policy Considerations Of Ensuring Cybersecurity In Outer Space, Daniella Febbraro

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In 2018, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the subject of a data breach where over 500 megabytes of data from a major mission system was stolen by hackers. This attack affected NASA’s Deep Space Network, prompting the United States Johnson Space Center to disconnect the International Space Station from the affected gateway due to fears that mission systems could become compromised. NASA has acknowledged that its vast online presence, which includes thousands of publicly accessible datasets, offers a large potential target for cybercriminals. The 2018 incident was one of many, with NASA experiencing more than 6000 cyberattacks from 2017-2021 alone. …

Data Vu: Why Breaches Involve The Same Stories Again And Again, Woodrow Hartzog, Daniel Solove

Shorter Faculty Works

In the classic comedy Groundhog Day, protagonist Phil, played by Bill Murray, asks “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” In this movie, Phil is stuck reliving the same day over and over, where the events repeat in a continual loop, and nothing he does can stop them. Phil’s predicament sounds a lot like our cruel cycle with data breaches.

Every year, organizations suffer more data spills and attacks, with personal information being exposed and abused at alarming rates. While Phil …

Breached!: Why Data Security Law Fails And How To Improve It, Woodrow Hartzog, Daniel Solove

Books

Digital connections permeate our lives—and so do data breaches. Given that we must be online for basic communication, finance, healthcare, and more, it is remarkable how difficult it is to secure our personal information. Despite the passage of many data security laws, data breaches are increasing at a record pace. In their book, BREACHED! WHY DATA SECURITY LAW FAILS AND HOW TO IMPROVE IT (Oxford University Press 2022), Professors Daniel Solove and Woodrow Hartzog argue that the law fails because, ironically, it focuses too much on the breach itself.

Drawing insights from many fascinating stories about data breaches, Solove and …

That Was Close! Reward Reporting Of Cybersecurity “Near Misses”, Jonathan Bair, Steven M. Bellovin, Andrew Manley, Blake Reid, Adam Shostak

Publications

Building, deploying, and maintaining systems with sufficient cybersecurity is challenging. Faster improvement would be valuable to society as a whole. Are we doing as much as we can to improve? We examine robust and long-standing systems for learning from near misses in aviation, and propose the creation of a Cyber Safety Reporting System (CSRS).

To support this argument, we examine the liability concerns which inhibit learning, including both civil and regulatory liability. We look to the way in which cybersecurity engineering and science is done today, and propose that a small amount of ‘policy entrepreneurship’ could have substantial positive impact. …

Health Information Equity, Craig Konnoth

Publications

In the last few years, numerous Americans’ health information has been collected and used for follow-on, secondary research. This research studies correlations between medical conditions, genetic or behavioral profiles, and treatments, to customize medical care to specific individuals. Recent federal legislation and regulations make it easier to collect and use the data of the low-income, unwell, and elderly for this purpose. This would impose disproportionate security and autonomy burdens on these individuals. Those who are well-off and pay out of pocket could effectively exempt their data from the publicly available information pot. This presents a problem which modern research ethics …

The Skeleton Of A Data Breach: The Ethical And Legal Concerns, Hilary G. Buttrick, Jason Davidson, Richard J. Mcgowan

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

After over thirty data breaches spanning the third and fourth quarter of 2012, Forbes magazine labeled the summer of 2012 as “The Summer of the Data Breach.” Four years later, businesses across multiple industries have suffered brand-image damage and paid millions of dollars in remedial expenses; we are living in the era of the mega breach. In 2014, companies such as Target, Home Depot, JP Morgan Chase, Anthem, Sony, UPS, Jimmy John’s, Kmart, Neiman Marcus, Community Health Systems, and the White House suffered data breaches. The Home Depot breach alone resulted in the loss of “56 million credit card accounts,” …

A Day In Court For Data Breach Plaintiffs: Preserving Standing Based On Increased Risk Of Identity Theft After Clapper V. Amnesty International Usa, Thomas Martecchini

Michigan Law Review

Following a data breach, consumers suffer an increased risk of identity theft because of the exposure of their personal information. Limited protection by data-breach statutes has made it difficult for consumers to seek compensation for these injuries and penalize the companies that fail to protect their information, leading consumers to bring common law claims in court. Yet courts have disagreed about whether an increased risk of identity theft qualifies as an injury-in-fact under Article III standing principles: the Seventh and Ninth Circuits have approved of increased risk standing, while the Third Circuit has rejected it. The Supreme Court has further …