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Data Security Breaches

By Todd C. Taylor and Karin M. McGinnis
February 28, 2015

In April 2014, Judge Esther Salas of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey decided that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could pursue a claim that a hotel company's failure to have adequate data security measures is an unfair trade practice. Federal Trade Commission v. Wyndham Worldwide Corp., 10 F.Supp. 3d 602 (D.N.J. 2014). In its recent brief addressing Wyndham's appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the FTC has made clear that it is not backing down. The agency believes that data security is a basic responsibility of any company that accepts consumer personal information, and that savvy companies should heed Wyndham's lessons.

U.S. Privacy Laws

In the United States, there is no single privacy and data security law of general applicability. There are, however, many federal and state laws that impose obligations on a wide number of different actors. For example, federal governmental entities are subject to information-security and privacy requirements under laws that include the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). At the state level, 47 states have enacted data breach notification laws involving personally identifiable information.

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