This summer has seen a great number of data breaches all over
the world. Some of these are high profile, like Epson Korea and
the rash of Sony hacks. Some are small, like an incident in
Louisiana where copies of confidential documents were found on a
city street. And some just make you shake your head, like the
play book of the Green Bay Packers being scattered all over the
street. 46 states in the US have data breach notification laws
that address when personally identifiable information (PII) is
breached. Many countries outside the US have data breach
notification and security laws that cover similar circumstances,
with some of the strongest in the EU. According to the Privacy
Rights Clearinghouse, since 2005 there have been about 2600 data
breaches made public affecting 535 million records – the real
numbers may be higher, since laws differ on when to notify
affected customers. Current US federal law requires a business
or organization to notify a customer of a data breach only in
limited circumstances. Th