Now that you have attended our seminar or viewed our webinar on 201 CMR 17.00 . . .
March 1, 2010 is quickly approaching. What exactly is your organization's compliance plan? How are you going to protect the personal information of your clients and employees? According to Jackie Noblett, a writer for Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology - www.masshightech.com - data breaches affecting Massachusetts residents occur at an alarmingly frequent rate. According to the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, the state office in charge of monitoring and enforcing state data breach regulations, more than 1 million Massachusetts residents were affected by 807 instances of data breaching between the dates of November 1, 2007 and October 31, 2009.
How can you begin to comply without hurting your wallet?
Some say we are at the end of the recession and others say the recession is still in progress, but either way finances are tight. The perceived high cost of the technical aspects of data safety make the March deadline for 201 CMR 17.00 compliance seem difficult, especially for small and medium sized businesses with matching budgets. So what can your company do to start complying now on minimal spending? According to the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, a staggering amount of the data breaches occuring stem from human error; of the 807 breaches aforementioned, roughly 300 of them were caused by employees misdirecting personal data, either intentionally or accidentally. Start by stepping up your employee training on the new state regulation. If you haven't already, watch the Bryley recording of our 201 CMR 17.00 compliance seminar for ideas.
Contact Bryley for the rest
As a small business ourselves, we understand that small and medium sized businesses have other things on their plate that they need to focus their time and money on. However, complying with 201 CMR 17.00 in full is very important to your organization. If you fail to do so, and there is a data breach it is going to tarnish your image and that is bad for business. There are also costly penalties in place. There is a $5,000 penalty plus an additional fine for delaying or failing to notify state authorities and residents affected by a security breach. There is a $5,000 penalty plus fine for failing to maintain a Written Information Security Plan or W.I.S.P. (to learn more about W.I.S.P.s watch our recorded seminar on 201 CMR 17.00). There are also $100 fines per individual (that can be racked up to $50,000 per incident) for failing to obtain written certification of data safety from third party vendors and the same fines apply for the improper disposal of personal information. It could actually wind up costing you more in the shorterm as well as in the longterm if your reputation is called into question if you fail to comply and a data breach unfortunately does happen.
Bryley is here to help you with the technical aspects of your W.I.S.P. whether it be data encryption of all personal files or installing a firewall or system security software such as anti-virus, anti-Spyware, anti-Malware, or anti-spam, or ongoing managed services including automatic patches, updates and scheduled scans
Contact us for a free consultation.
Call: 888.280.5799
Email: Sales@Bryley.com
Want to learn more?
Read a full article on Massachusetts data breaches by Jackie Noblett for Mass High Tech.
http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2009/12/07/daily48-Businesses-still-plagued-by-data-breaches.html
Watch our recorded seminar on 201 CMR 17.00
http://www.bryley.com/201_CMR_17.html
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