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Cryptocurrency with Stephen Palley

July 22nd, 2021|Categories: ELP, HB Risk Notes, Insurance, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Cryptocurrency with Stephen Palley Joining me to discuss this paradigm-shattering model is Anderson Kill Partner Stephen D. Palley, a seasoned trial lawyer and litigator with extensive experience in complex commercial disputes like insurance recovery, securities litigation, and corporate governance.  Stephen has significant hands-on software development and design experience. Based in the firm’s D.C. office, he is co-chair of its cross-disciplinary blockchain and virtual currency group. At several points during our conversation I referred to an article co-written by Stephen and his New York colleague Joshua Gold, titled Protecting Cryptocurrency Assets. Stephen earned his J.D. from Washington University, his M.A. from the University of Delaware, and his B.A. (cum laude) from Tufts University (Go Jumbos!). This podcast is the audio companion to the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation, a collaborative project between HB Litigation Conferences and the Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, Docket Alarm and, most recently, Judicata. If you have comments or wish to participate in one our projects, or want to tell me how insightful and informative Stephen is, please drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com. I hope you enjoy the interview, especially when Leo, my cat, knocked over my microphone and when Stephen educated me on the existence of the Weird Beard Festival and other whisker-based celebrations. --Tom Hagy Cryptocurrency assets now exceed $1.5 trillion globally. What a great [...]

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Policyholders Hit With Ransomware, Then Strike Insurance Coverage Oil in Indiana

June 30th, 2021|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes, Insurance, Journal, News|Tags: , , , , |

Policyholders Hit With Ransomware, Then Strike Insurance Coverage Oil in Indiana Abstract The cost of ransomware to businesses is estimated to have doubled since 2019 to $20 billion, according to Coveware. Policyholders turn to their insurance policies to recover losses that average more than $230,000 per incident. In the case discussed, the carrier denied a policyholder’s claim as being outside the computer fraud provisions of the commercial crime portion of the policy. Two lower courts sided with the carrier, but the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in favor of coverage. This is a significant win for policyholders seeking coverage for losses under policies not sold as “cyber insurance.” The article discusses the decision and the precedents cited in an area of litigation that only promises to expand as ransomware and similar digital crimes proliferate. Author Scott Godes and Andy Detherage were counsel to United Policy-holders, which submitted an amicus brief in favor of granting transfer and reversing the lower court decision, in the Indiana Supreme Court decision referenced in this article. Messrs. Godes and Detherage are partners in Barnes & Thornburg LLP. About The Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation is a co-production of HB, Fastcase, and Law Street Media. You can also hear the complementary (and complimentary) Emerging Litigation Podcast wherever podcasts appear. For questions, contact Tom Hagy, Editor [...]

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Facial Recognition: How It Works and How It Doesn’t

January 14th, 2021|Categories: Class Actions, HB Risk Notes, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Debbie Reynolds Founder, CEO & CDPO Debbie Reynolds Consulting Website Martin T. Tully Founding Partner Actuate Law Website Facial Recognition: Benefits & Risks Editor's Note: Imagine how great technology would be if it weren't for people. Since the beginning of time man has developed remarkable solutions to common problems. But leave it to nefarious, despicable, criminal or just plain dumb people to ruin them for the rest of us. You know, like gun powder, nuclear power, and the internet. Facial recognition programs and collection of biometric data would appear to have more benefits than risks, but those risks are there. As use of the technology proliferates we can expect more litigation as additional states follow Illinois -- the first to enact a state Biometric Information Privacy Act. Martin T. Tully of Actuate Law LLC and Debbie Reynolds of Debbie Reynolds Consulting LLC, outline these risks and how regulation and litigation is responding in their article: Facial Recognition Proliferation: Litigation and Legal Implications of Biometric Technologies. Below are a couple excerpts from their article, published in the January 2021 edition of the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation. --Tom Hagy Some FR technologies use a scanner to identify 4,500 different points of facial geometry to create a map of a person's face. The application doesn’t [...]

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Does Data Sharing and Zoombombing Cause Actual Harm?

December 22nd, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, HB Risk Notes, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Legal Writer Law Street Media Zoom Says Data Sharing, Zoombombing Doesn't Cause Personal Harm Zoom is a good name for this company. It seems to have come out of nowhere to become the new verb for web meetings, robbing that distinction from many more established competitors like WebEx and GoToMeeting, maybe because they don't have cool web-sounding names, although people don't seem to be saying "let's Skype later," as much as they used to. Sure, we still "Facetime," but Zoom really shot to the top when it comes to name recognition. According to CNBC's Ari Levy, Zoom reported fiscal third-quarter revenue growth of more than 300% after seeing 355% expansion in the prior period. The company's stock was up almost seven-fold this year but "pulled back in November on positive news surrounding a coronavirus vaccine," Levy reported. And with success comes risk, especially when dealing with private data.  Here is an excerpt of a post shared with the permission of Fastcase and Law Street Media. --Tom Hagy, HB Litigation Conferences Dec. 4, 2020 (San Francisco) -- On Wednesday [Dec. 2], in the Northern District of California, Zoom Video Communications filed a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ first amended consolidated class action complaint (FAC) on the grounds that the FAC failed to state a claim for which relief may be [...]

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Cryptocurrency Article and Webinar

September 23rd, 2020|Categories: Corporate Compliance, HB Risk Notes, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Cryptocurrency: The Good, The Bad, and the Tricky According to a recent Visual Capitalist article, there are now more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation, fueling an exploding $200 billion industry. Clearly it is a boom time for virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, like cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers. Despite its notoriety, mystique still surrounds cryptocurrency, from its use of blockchain technology, to the benefits and weaknesses of trading decentralized money, to national security implications. With crypto’s rise comes global implications. Its use often makes its way into headlines about criminal activity, such as the recent arrest of a 19-year-old and his friends for their alleged roles in a highly publicized Twitter hack. Forensic tools are in a constant state of development. For example, blockchain analysis tools assisted investigators in quickly identifying the young Twitter hackers, according to a post on the CipherTrace blog. Two Sides of the Digital Coin. There are many upsides to cryptocurrency. Transactions are secure without bank oversight. They can be processed at any time, not just during business hours. It has purchase power anywhere. Finally, cryptocurrency may provide greater benefit to developing countries where the local currency may swing due to exchange rate instability. In such countries, and where many citizens may be unbanked, supplanting traditional coinage with cryptocurrency could stabilize finance and open its doors to many. With crypto’s rise comes global implications. Shortcomings [...]

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Facial Recognition Update July 2020

July 17th, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Emerging Litigation & Risk, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Facial Recognition Technology -- Emerging After Decades of Development -- Draws Lawsuits and Proposed Bans  We sometimes forget that not all of the technical wizards who transformed our world were young “geniuses” jacked up on Starbucks, their shirttails hanging out in the ping-pong section of their open concept offices. Woody Bledsoe was born 99 years ago. As a young son of a sharecropper he demonstrated exceptional mathematical capabilities. Early in his career he had a dream: A machine that could think like a human, converse like one, and even recognize faces. This was as far back as the 1950s. This mathematician and computer scientist would go on to teach for decades at the University of Austin where he worked to advance automated reasoning and artificial intelligence. But what was his role in the development of the technology exactly? Did he perform work for a CIA front? And why, in his old age and suffering from the cruelty of ALS that would ultimately kill him in 1995, did he ask his son to set fire to a stack of old papers? Take a look at “The Secret History of Facial Recognition” written by Shaun Raviv for Wired Magazine, which explores why, among other things, “the record of [Blesdoe’s] role all but vanished.” If there isn’t a movie script in the works there probably will be soon.   Today facial recognition is used in such innocent and handy ways as pointing out [...]

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The Dark Net: Anonymity, Infrastructure, and the Future

July 10th, 2020|Categories: Corporate Compliance, HB Risk Notes, Mass Torts, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Register Webinar Info Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020 United States 8am PT | 10am CT | 11am ET United Kingdom 4pm BST Get CLE or CPE, a complete set of materials, and answers to your questions! Email us your: Speaker questions CLE questions Topics Covered Physical and Logical Topology and Method of Data Transmission Using the Dark Net for Threat Hunting Hacking Groups and Malicious Hackers   The Future of The Dark Net and Anonymity The Dark Net: Anonymity, Infrastructure, and the Future Is the Dark Web Getting Darker?  Wed., Aug. 5, 2020 | Produced for Access Data by HB Litigation Conferences The web, however singular it may seem from behind an everyday user’s computer or smartphone screen, comprises three distinctive parts: the public net (or web), the deep net, and the dark net. Though the dark net contains some innocuous content and is used for legitimate purposes, it also operates as a platform for illegal marketplaces. These offer almost anything a criminal or cybercriminal might want to buy or sell like malware, exploits, hackers-for-hire, information lifted from data breaches, censored content, and goods like drugs, guns, and other contraband. Observers report that the dark web is getting darker, meaning hardcore criminals make up a greater percentage of its user base. Exploits and [...]

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Setting the record straight on cyber insurance claim denials and the ‘war exclusion’

July 22nd, 2019|Categories: HB Risk Notes, Insurance, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Is insurance coverage for cyber claims barred by a war exclusion?  Judy Selby and Peter McLaughlin asked this question in a recent post for IAPP. Two corporate giants, Mondelez International and Merck, made the headlines recently as they sustained serious damage as a result of a NotPetya infection, an encrypting ransomware. They have each filed declaratory judgments after their carriers denied their claims. Reports of these insurance disputes have led to concerns that cyber incidents involving state actors would not be covered by cyber policies with war exclusions. The Verizon 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report attributes 23% of breaches  to nation-states or state-affiliated players. "These state-sponsored attacks typically range from theft or espionage to financial gain; however, some attacks appear to have been driven by grudge or by swatting a neighbor," Selby and McLaughlin write. "[P]erhaps we are viewing this through an old lens. Insurance has often been purchased to address hazards. Specifically, an organization obtains a policy to counter the slim risk of a fire, flood or other catastrophe. Fred Kaplan wrote an article for Slate in April in which he argues the inevitability of attacks – state-sponsored or otherwise – means that we should view cyber insurance more like we do health insurance: coverage against the inevitable, rather than against a hazard risk." Read on for what else Selby [...]

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Cyber Captive Survey 2019 — AON

June 26th, 2019|Categories: HB Risk Notes, Insurance, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Aon’s Cyber Captive Survey 2019 says that the rapid growth in the captive market of cyber-specific policies underscores that cyber is one of the primary risks for organizations across the world driven by an increasingly complex operational, technological and regulatory environment. Key findings include: Healthcare and energy industries are leading the way, with 19% and 15% of organizations in these industries utilizing captives for cyber coverage respectively. 41% of captives surveyed are incubating cyber risk. The range in limits of cover taken out is up to USD$100 million. An estimated 34% of all captives will be writing cyber in five years’ time. Read the complete report here! 

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First Class Action Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Victims of First American Title Company Data Breach — Yahoo!

June 26th, 2019|Categories: Class Actions, HB Risk Notes, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

"Gibbs Law Group LLP has filed the first nationwide class action lawsuit accusing First American Title Company of failing to properly secure 885 million sensitive customer files, instead choosing to store them in a 'woefully insecure,'” publicly-accessible system. “First American has turned the American dream of home ownership into a financial security nightmare for its customers,” according to the complaint. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that First American Title Company was negligent, and violated its contracts with customers, in the way it stored their personal information, which included bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, financial and tax records, and photos of their drivers’ licenses. "This grave lapse in security resulted in publicly exposing hundreds of millions of customers’ personal files, leaving them vulnerable to identify theft and other cybercrimes," the plaintiffs maintain.  Read the complete Press Release on Yahoo! here

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The Future of Cyber Operations and the Government

June 7th, 2019|Categories: Corporate Compliance, HB Risk Notes, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

In the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act the House Armed Services Committee -- specifically the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threat Capabilities -- seeks to amend the annual legislation to ensure that Congress is informed when the executive branch executes offensive or defensive cyber operations. The bill defines offensive or defensive cyber operations as a “sensitive military operation.” The goal of this shared information is additional oversight, especially given the newness of cyber tactics. As reported by journalist Derek B. Johnson of FWC.com, two covert cyber operations have taken place since POTUS announced the new policy. The first was in October 2018, a cyber operation with a goal of informing Russian operatives not to meddle with the midterm election. The second took place the following November in which the U.S. Cyber Command blocked access to Russian Internet Research Agency post election. While these two operations have been called “mild” in some critiques, former White House Director of Cyber Infrastructure Protection under President George W. Bush, Jason Healey, believes this highly specialized tactic is ideal since it presents the least potential for collateral damage. While Healey warns against grand and overt attacks, he states that sometimes "conflict is straightforward and you just have to stop adversaries from punching you in the mouth.” Read the complete post by Derek B. Johnson on FCW.com [...]

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Dr. Babyl: Artificial Intelligence Could Save Lives, Time and Money — TheDailyBeast.com

May 27th, 2019|Categories: Corporate Compliance, HB Risk Notes, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Itchy throat? Headache? Upset stomach? There's an app for that. There is a new AI healthcare system called Babylon UK’s National Health Service which features an AI-driven app that is reportedly able to separate “run-of-the-mill” illnesses from more life-threatening ones, while saving time, money, and anxiety for patients and doctors alike. Babylon offers more than diagnostic assistance; it is accessible to people in remote areas. "For example, Babyl, the Rwandan version of Babylon, offers remote appointments with clinicians, fills prescriptions, orders lab tests, and issues referrals.” Babyl enables affordable, personalized healthcare, combined with “the brains of thousands of doctors at once” to reach patients who cannot get to a doctor’s officer. In addition to assisting doctors with everyday check-ups and treating the common cold, the AI’s abilities extend to clinical trials. “In 2018 the Mayo Clinic partnered with IBM’s Watson to match patients with breast cancer to accessible clinical trials covered by their health plans. The matching program increased the enrollment of breast cancer sufferers in Mayo Clinic’s own clinical trials by 80%." Questions are being raised, however, about how to mitigate risks posed by hacking or by nefarious manipulation of the system. Read about this and more in the complete post by Joelle Renstrom on TheDailyBeast.com. 

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