Google Can Be Careless With Your Information

Last month, while photographing neighborhoods for its Google Maps website, computers mounted in the roaming cars were capturing email messages, passwords and other private data from unsecured residential wireless hot spots.

Google’s Vice President Alan Eustace announced in a blog post that the data collection was unintentional and it hoped to delete it as soon as possible.

Last year, during testing of its Google Voice service, Google posted the text of voice mail messages along with a link to the actual voice mail recording enabling anyone to read and hear the content of the message.

Google stated that this was not an error and was permitted by design. However as a result of the desire for people to keep their voice mail messages private, the content will no longer be available online.

We believe Google usually has the best intentions, however it’s best to remember that Google offers free or low cost services in conjunction with advertising displays. These displays are targeted to you based on the content you store on Google along with web surfing history stored on your computer.

A Warning To Business Owners: Non-Compliance With New Regulations Can Mean Hefty Fines

In the past 10 years, over 10,000 new regulations have been placed on the books by local, state and federal agencies pertaining to the handling, storage, and disposal of confidential client, patient, and employee documents and information. The state of Massachusetts, for example, has recently enacted one of these privacy laws and is requiring anyone who has business in that state to comply by March 2011.

Basically, ANY company that holds social security numbers (such as your employees’ social security numbers), credit card numbers, or financial statements needs to comply with these regulations or the fines for not doing so can be hefty.

Want to make sure you stay on the right side of these laws? Here are a few tips that will go a long way in making sure you don’t end up fined, sued, or with a bad reputation for not securing client or employee information:

• Get The Facts - If you think you are holding confidential information that should be secured, ask a qualified attorney who specializes in data confidentiality in your industry about what you must do to meet new government regulations.

• Encrypt Your Backups - Make sure your backups are at least 32-bit encryption. Encryption takes every keystroke you type and transforms it into 32 different characters, making it nearly impossible for hackers to use the information, even if they were able to steal it. Some backup solutions will even provide tighter security with 256-bit encryption.

• Have A Powerful Firewall - Firewalls keep hackers and other intruders from getting into your network and accessing important, confidential and private information. If you have the right firewall in place, it should act like a shield over your data and give you the protection you need to be incompliance with these laws.

• Lock Down Your Passwords - One of the surefire ways to prevent any unauthorized access to privacy information and take a step toward regulation compliance is to make sure only those who need the passwords to your computers have them.

Want To Be Sure Your Technology Is In Compliance With These Laws? Call us at (949) 481-1233 and ask us about our Privacy Compliance Network Audit.