News and Updates
Look for the new maroon Records Management vests
Student workers from Records Management will now be sporting maroon vests when they go out to the departments to better identify them.
Final Regulations Published on Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
ED.Gov, 12/09/2008, http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2008/12/12092008b.html
Following the tragic April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, the U.S. Department of Education published in today's Federal Register final regulations to clarify and give schools greater flexibility in making determinations about disclosures of information from students' education records in order to address threats to the health or safety of students or other individuals.
Texas A&M International professor fired for publishing names of plagiarizers
By Matt Cobb, The Daily Toreador, 11/20/2008, http://media.www.dailytoreador.com/media/storage/paper870/news/2008/11/20/News/Texas.Am.International.Professor.Fired.For.Publishing.Names.Of.Accused.Plagiariz-3553789.shtml
A professor at Texas A&M International University in Laredo was fired Nov. 5 for displaying on his course blog the names of six students accused of plagiarism.
A Wealth of Data, and Nobody in Charge
By Lisa Guernsey, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/21/2008, http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i13/13a00103.htm
Wanted: scout to look out for Big Brother and his cousin, Data Breach. Evangelist to spread the word about what information can be shared. A shredder abettor who knows what is nobody's business. This person should also be prepared to help our college recover from embarrassing headlines about Social Security numbers gone missing.Colleges may soon be running ads something like that for chief privacy officers, a title so new in higher education that one campus public-relations official, when asked if his institution had a CPO, replied, "What in the blue blazes is that?"
University of Florida discloses patient record data breach
By Ellen Messmer, Network World, 11/12/2008, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/111208-ufla.html?hpg1=bn%20
The University of Florida today disclosed that an unknown attacker gained access to a server in its College of Dentistry where hundreds of thousands of patient records were stored.
Baylor Health Care says laptop with patient data stolen
By Jason Roberson, Dallas Morning News, 11/05/08, http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/110508dnbusbaylordatatheft.91bf7e.html
A laptop computer containing limited health information on 100,000 patients was stolen from an employee's car in September, Baylor Health Care System Inc. said Monday.
Why Do Bad Things Happen to PCI-Compliant Companies?
By Jack M. Germain, E-Commerce Times,Part of the ECT News Network, 10/24/08, http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64926.html
Caution: Just because your company has a payment card industry (PCI) compliance certificate, don't assume your data is perfectly safe and secure.
Credit-card security standard issued after much debate
Ellen Messmer, Network World, 10/01/08, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/100108-pci-credit-card.html?page=1
The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, the organization that sets technical requirements for processing credit- and debit-cards, last week issued revised security rules. The council also indicated that next year it will focus on new guidelines for end-to-end encryption, payment machines and virtualization.
Rolling Disaster - Flooding in 2008
Roger Peters, Continuity E-Guide, 10/29/08, http://disaster-resource.com/newsletter/subpages/v258/meettheexperts.htm
Severe flooding in the Midwest, over 1,700 fires burning in California during July, an earthquake in Illinois, shipping shut down for an extended period on the Mississippi, production lines shut down due to the bankruptcy of a key supplier, record oil and grain prices, and the subprime mortgage meltdown are only some of the events that have impacted us during the past year.
Where does Business Continuity Planning Belong in an Organization?
Cheryl Vallender, Continuity E-Guide, 10/01/08, http://disaster-resource.com/newsletter/subpages/v254/meettheexperts.htm
When asked in a recent survey where Business Continuity belongs (or to whom it should report) in an organization, the field was split almost 50/50 between Risk Management and the CEO.