SCENARIO
Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:
Your organization, the Chicago (U.S.)-based Society for Urban Greenspace, has used the same vendor to operate all aspects of an online store for several years. As a small nonprofit, the Society cannot afford the higher-priced options, but you have been relatively satisfied with this budget vendor, Shopping Cart Saver (SCS). Yes, there have been some issues. Twice, people who purchased items from the store have had their credit card information used fraudulently subsequent to transactions on your site, but in neither case did the investigation reveal with certainty that the Society's store had been hacked. The thefts could have been employee-related.
Just as disconcerting was an incident where the organization discovered that SCS had sold information it had collected from customers to third parties. However, as Jason Roland, your SCS account representative, points out, it took only a phone call from you to clarify expectations and the "misunderstanding" has not occurred again.
As an information-technology program manager with the Society, the role of the privacy professional is only one of many you play. In all matters, however, you must consider the financial bottom line. While these problems with privacy protection have been significant, the additional revenues of sales of items such as shirts and coffee cups from the store have been significant. The Society's operating budget is slim, and all sources of revenue are essential.
Now a new challenge has arisen. Jason called to say that starting in two weeks, the customer data from the store would now be stored on a data cloud. "The good news," he says, "is that we have found a low-cost provider in Finland, where the data would also be held. So, while there may be a small charge to pass through to you, it won't be exorbitant, especially considering the advantages of a cloud." Lately, you have been hearing about cloud computing and you know it's fast becoming the new paradigm for various applications. However, you have heard mixed reviews about the potential impacts on privacy protection. You begin to research and discover that a number of the leading cloud service providers have signed a letter of intent to work together on shared conventions and technologies for privacy protection. You make a note to find out if Jason's Finnish provider is signing on.
What process can best answer your Questions about the vendor's data security safeguards?
SCENARIO
Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:
Ben works in the IT department of IgNight, Inc., a company that designs lighting solutions for its clients.
Although IgNight's customer base consists primarily of offices in the US, some individuals have been so impressed by the unique aesthetic and energy-saving design of the light fixtures that they have requested IgNight's installations in their homes across the globe.
One Sunday morning, while using his work laptop to purchase tickets for an upcoming music festival, Ben happens to notice some unusual user activity on company files. From a cursory review, all the data still appears to be where it is meant to be but he can't shake off the feeling that something is not right. He knows that it is a possibility that this could be a colleague performing unscheduled maintenance, but he recalls an email from his company's security team reminding employees to be on alert for attacks from a known group of malicious actors specifically targeting the industry.
Ben is a diligent employee and wants to make sure that he protects the company but he does not want to bother his hard-working colleagues on the weekend. He is going to discuss the matter with this manager first thing in the morning but wants to be prepared so he can demonstrate his knowledge in this area and plead his case for a promotion.
If this were a data breach, how is it likely to be categorized?
SCENARIO
Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:
As the Director of data protection for Consolidated Records Corporation, you are justifiably pleased with your accomplishments so far. Your hiring was precipitated by warnings from regulatory agencies following a series of relatively minor data breaches that could easily have been worse. However, you have not had a reportable incident for the three years that you have been with the company. In fact, you consider your program a model that others in the data storage industry may note in their own program development.
You started the program at Consolidated from a jumbled mix of policies and procedures and worked toward coherence across departments and throughout operations. You were aided along the way by the program's sponsor, the vice president of operations, as well as by a Privacy Team that started from a clear understanding of the need for change.
Initially, your work was greeted with little confidence or enthusiasm by the company's "old guard" among both the executive team and frontline personnel working with data and interfacing with clients. Through the use of metrics that showed the costs not only of the breaches that had occurred, but also projections of the costs that easily could occur given the current state of operations, you soon had the leaders and key decision-makers largely on your side. Many of the other employees were more resistant, but face-to-face meetings with each department and the development of a baseline privacy training program achieved sufficient "buy-in" to begin putting the proper procedures into place.
Now, privacy protection is an accepted component of all current operations involving personal or protected data and must be part of the end product of any process of technological development. While your approach is not systematic, it is fairly effective.
You are left contemplating:
What must be done to maintain the program and develop it beyond just a data breach prevention program?
How can you build on your success?
What are the next action steps?
How can Consolidated's privacy training program best be further developed?
SCENARIO
Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:
Martin Briseno is the director of human resources at the Canyon City location of the U.S. hotel chain Pacific Suites. In 1998, Briseno decided to change the hotel's on-the-job mentoring model to a standardized training program for employees who were progressing from line positions into supervisory positions. He developed a curriculum comprising a series of lessons, scenarios, and assessments, which was delivered in-person to small groups. Interest in the training increased, leading Briseno to work with corporate HR specialists and software engineers to offer the program in an online format. The online program saved the cost of a trainer and allowed participants to work through the material at their own pace.
Upon hearing about the success of Briseno's program, Pacific Suites corporate Vice President Maryanne Silva-Hayes expanded the training and offered it company-wide. Employees who completed the program received certification as a Pacific Suites Hospitality Supervisor. By 2001, the program had grown to provide industry-wide training. Personnel at hotels across the country could sign up and pay to take the course online.
As the program became increasingly profitable, Pacific Suites developed an offshoot business, Pacific Hospitality Training (PHT). The sole focus of PHT was developing and marketing a variety of online courses and course progressions providing a number of professional certifications in the hospitality industry.
By setting up a user account with PHT, course participants could access an information library, sign up for courses, and take end-of-course certification tests. When a user opened a new account, all information was saved by default, including the user's name, date of birth, contact information, credit card information, employer, and job title. The registration page offered an opt-out choice that users could click to not have their credit card numbers saved. Once a user name and password were established, users could return to check their course status, review and reprint their certifications, and sign up and pay for new courses. Between 2002 and
2008, PHT issued more than 700,000 professional certifications.
PHT's profits declined in 2009 and 2010, the victim of industry downsizing and increased competition from e- learning providers. By 2011, Pacific Suites was out of the online certification business and PHT was dissolved.
The training program's systems and records remained in Pacific Suites' digital archives, un-accessed and unused. Briseno and Silva-Hayes moved on to work for other companies, and there was no plan for handling the archived data after the program ended. After PHT was dissolved, Pacific Suites executives turned their attention to crucial day-to-day operations. They planned to deal with the PHT materials once resources allowed.
In 2012, the Pacific Suites computer network was hacked. Malware installed on the online reservation system exposed the credit card information of hundreds of hotel guests. While targeting the financial data on the reservation site, hackers also discovered the archived training course data and registration accounts of Pacific Hospitality Training's customers. The result of the hack was the exfiltration of the credit card numbers of recent hotel guests and the exfiltration of the PHT database with all its contents.
A Pacific Suites systems analyst discovered the information security breach in a routine scan of activity reports. Pacific Suites quickly notified credit card companies and recent hotel guests of the breach, attempting to prevent serious harm. Technical security engineers faced a challenge in dealing with the PHT data.
PHT course administrators and the IT engineers did not have a system for tracking, cataloguing, and storing information. Pacific Suites has procedures in place for data access and storage, but those procedures were not implemented when PHT was formed. When the PHT database was acquired by Pacific Suites, it had no owner or oversight. By the time technical security engineers determined what private information was compromised, at least 8,000 credit card holders were potential victims of fraudulent activity.
How was Pacific Suites responsible for protecting the sensitive information of its offshoot, PHT?
