In my 2008 book, “THREAT! Managing Risk in a Hostile World,” I warned about a terrorist group known as E.L.F. or the Earth Liberation Front. These are terrorists that strike out against businesses. They’ve burned homes under construction by builders and they have attacked automobile dealerships. I wrote about them in the context of a [...]

Does the arrest and sentencing of Justin Franchi Solodz of the Earth Liberation Front (E.L.F.) serve as an indicator that E.L.F. is engaging in new forms of direct action? Solodz was sentenced in China for manufacturing illegal drugs. As noted in a prior blog entry today, there may be a relationship between the drug manufacture [...]

Under Massachusetts law, not only is it necessary to protect personal information that is used to conduct business, it must be disposed of properly. Security, privacy, risk, and compliance professionals need to know that the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts may apply civil penalties in the form of fines for improper disposal of [...]

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! The new Massachusetts privacy law, 201 CMR 17.00, seems final, barring any unanticipated changes. The most recent changes are interesting but leave many questions unanswered. Earlier this Fall, I, and a number of others, gave testimony about various aspects of 201. Some of our concerns were addressed, while others were not. But first, [...]

In an earlier post today, I noted the H1N1 risk in Eastern Europe and its potential impact on information management. A client who read the blog asked about H1N1 and India. The bad news is that approximately 33 percent or one-third of the population of India can be expected to come down with the H1N1 [...]

Enforcement of intellectual property and trade secret protections in China continue to be problematic. While China is a signatory to the World Trade Organization, real change in recognizing intellectual property and trade secrets rights is likely to be years away. The amount of the U.S. federal debt covered by China is approximately $800 billion. Being [...]

If you are outsourcing data to countries in Eastern Europe, make sure those companies have business contingency plans for H1N1 if the management of that information is sensitive or timely. According to the Sunday, November 22nd edition of the Washington Post, the Ukraine, Belarus, Terkmenistan, and other nations are experiencing political as well as medical [...]

Are you, like many others, considering a cloud computing strategy? The shorter-term economics of cloud computing are compelling. Certain agencies within the U.S. federal government expect to cut web operating costs in half by migrating to the cloud. In the face of such financial savings, who wouldn’t sit up and take notice? But so much [...]

Writing a white paper on the security of Cloud computing, and think of the different SaaS currently available.  A thought I keep having is Amazon was the first SaaS.  Not their EC2, but the buying/selling services.  They provided the hardware and software environment for hundreds of vendors to sell their products at Amazon.com.  More to [...]

Welcome to our blog.