SCENARIO

Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Manasa is a product manager at Omnipresent Omnimedia, where she is responsible for leading the development of the company’s flagship product, the Handy Helper. The Handy Helper is an application that can be used in the home to manage family calendars, do online shopping, and schedule doctor appointments. After having had a successful launch in the United States, the Handy Helper is about to be made available for purchase worldwide.

The packaging and user guide for the Handy Helper indicate that it is a "privacy friendly" product suitable for the whole family, including children, but does not provide any further detail or privacy notice. In order to use the application, a family creates a single account, and the primary user has access to all information about the other users. Upon start up, the primary user must check a box consenting to receive marketing emails from Omnipresent Omnimedia and selected marketing partners in order to be able to use the application.

Sanjay, the head of privacy at Omnipresent Omnimedia, was working on an agreement with a European distributor of Handy Helper when he fielded many Questions about the product from the distributor. Sanjay needed to look more closely at the product in order to be able to answer the Questions as he was not involved in the product development process.

In speaking with the product team, he learned that the Handy Helper collected and stored all of a user’s sensitive medical information for the medical appointment scheduler. In fact, all of the user’s information is stored by Handy Helper for the additional purpose of creating additional products and to analyze usage of the product. This data is all stored in the cloud and is encrypted both during transmission and at rest.

Consistent with the CEO’s philosophy that great new product ideas can come from anyone, all Omnipresent Omnimedia employees have access to user data under a program called Eureka. Omnipresent Omnimedia is hoping that at some point in the future, the data will reveal insights that could be used to create a fully automated application that runs on artificial intelligence, but as of yet, Eureka is not well-defined and is considered a long-term goal.

What step in the system development process did Manasa skip?

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SCENARIO

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Richard McAdams recently graduated law school and decided to return to the small town of Lexington, Virginia to help run his aging grandfather’s law practice. The elder McAdams desired a limited, lighter role in the practice, with the hope that his grandson would eventually take over when he fully retires. In addition to hiring Richard, Mr. McAdams employs two paralegals, an administrative assistant, and a part-time IT specialist who handles all of their basic networking needs. He plans to hire more employees once Richard gets settled and assesses the office’s strategies for growth.

Immediately upon arrival, Richard was amazed at the amount of work that needed to done in order to modernize the office, mostly in regard to the handling of clients’ personal data. His first goal is to digitize all the records kept in file cabinets, as many of the documents contain personally identifiable financial and medical data. Also, Richard has noticed the massive amount of copying by the administrative assistant throughout the day, a practice that not only adds daily to the number of files in the file cabinets, but may create security issues unless a formal policy is firmly in place Richard is also concerned with the overuse of the communal copier/ printer located in plain view of clients who frequent the building. Yet another area of concern is the use of the same fax machine by all of the employees. Richard hopes to reduce its use dramatically in order to ensure that personal data receives the utmost security and protection, and eventually move toward a strict Internet faxing policy by the year’s end.

Richard expressed his concerns to his grandfather, who agreed, that updating data storage, data security, and an overall approach to increasing the protection of personal data in all facets is necessary Mr. McAdams granted him the freedom and authority to do so. Now Richard is not only beginning a career as an attorney, but also functioning as the privacy officer of the small firm. Richard plans to meet with the IT employee the following day, to get insight into how the office computer system is currently set-up and managed.

Which of the following policy statements needs additional instructions in order to further protect the personal data of their clients?

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SCENARIO

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Amira is thrilled about the sudden expansion of NatGen. As the joint Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with her long-time business partner Sadie, Amira has watched the company grow into a major competitor in the green energy market. The current line of products includes wind turbines, solar energy panels, and equipment for geothermal systems. A talented team of developers means that NatGen’s line of products will only continue to grow.

With the expansion, Amira and Sadie have received advice from new senior staff members brought on to help manage the company’s growth. One recent suggestion has been to combine the legal and security functions of the company to ensure observance of privacy laws and the company’s own privacy policy. This sounds overly complicated to Amira, who wants departments to be able to use, collect, store, and dispose of customer data in ways that will best suit their needs. She does not want administrative oversight and complex structuring to get in the way of people doing innovative work.

Sadie has a similar outlook. The new Chief Information Officer (CIO) has proposed what Sadie believes is an unnecessarily long timetable for designing a new privacy program. She has assured him that NatGen will use the best possible equipment for electronic storage of customer and employee data. She simply needs a list of equipment and an estimate of its cost. But the CIO insists that many issues are necessary to consider before the company gets to that stage.

Regardless, Sadie and Amira insist on giving employees space to do their jobs. Both CEOs want to entrust the monitoring of employee policy compliance to low-level managers. Amira and Sadie believe these managers can adjust the company privacy policy according to what works best for their particular departments. NatGen’s CEOs know that flexible interpretations of the privacy policy in the name of promoting green energy would be highly unlikely to raise any concerns with their customer base, as long as the data is always used in course of normal business activities.

Perhaps what has been most perplexing to Sadie and Amira has been the CIO’s recommendation to institute a privacy compliance hotline. Sadie and Amira have relented on this point, but they hope to compromise by allowing employees to take turns handling reports of privacy policy violations. The implementation will be easy because the employees need no special preparation. They will simply have to document any concerns they hear.

Sadie and Amira are aware that it will be challenging to stay true to their principles and guard against corporate culture strangling creativity and employee morale. They hope that all senior staff will see the benefit of trying a unique approach.

If Amira and Sadie’s ideas about adherence to the company’s privacy policy go unchecked, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could potentially take action against NatGen for what?

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SCENARIO

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Penny has recently joined Ace Space, a company that sells homeware accessories online, as its new privacy officer. The company is based in California but thanks to some great publicity from a social media influencer last year, the company has received an influx of sales from the EU and has set up a regional office in Ireland to support this expansion. To become familiar with Ace Space’s practices and assess what her privacy priorities will be, Penny has set up meetings with a number of colleagues to hear about the work that they have been doing and their compliance efforts.

Penny’s colleague in Marketing is excited by the new sales and the company’s plans, but is also concerned that Penny may curtail some of the growth opportunities he has planned. He tells her “I heard someone in the breakroom talking about some new privacy laws but I really don’t think it affects us. We’re just a small company. I mean we just sell accessories online, so what’s the real risk?” He has also told her that he works with a number of small companies that help him get projects completed in a hurry. “We’ve got to meet our deadlines otherwise we lose money. I just sign the contracts and get Jim in finance to push through the payment. Reviewing the contracts takes time that we just don’t have.”

In her meeting with a member of the IT team, Penny has learned that although Ace Space has taken a number of precautions to protect its website from malicious activity, it has not taken the same level of care of its physical files or internal infrastructure. Penny’s colleague in IT has told her that a former employee lost an encrypted USB key with financial data on it when he left. The company nearly lost access to their customer database last year after they fell victim to a phishing attack. Penny is told by her IT colleague that the IT team “didn’t know what to do or who should do what. We hadn’t been trained on it but we’re a small team though, so it worked out OK in the end.” Penny is concerned that these issues will compromise Ace Space’s privacy and data protection.

Penny is aware that the company has solid plans to grow its international sales and will be working closely with the CEO to give the organization a data “shake up”. Her mission is to cultivate a strong privacy culture within the company.

Penny has a meeting with Ace Space’s CEO today and has been asked to give her first impressions and an overview of her next steps.

To help Penny and her CEO with their objectives, what would be the most helpful approach to address her IT concerns?

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The theft of proprietary information could have best been prevented by?

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SCENARIO

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Your organization, the Chicago (U.S.)-based Society for Urban Greenspace, has used the same vendor to operate all aspects of an online store for several years. As a small nonprofit, the Society cannot afford the higher-priced options, but you have been relatively satisfied with this budget vendor, Shopping Cart Saver (SCS). Yes, there have been some issues. Twice, people who purchased items from the store have had their credit card information used fraudulently subsequent to transactions on your site, but in neither case did the investigation reveal with certainty that the Society’s store had been hacked. The thefts could have been employee-related.

Just as disconcerting was an incident where the organization discovered that SCS had sold

information it had collected from customers to third parties. However, as Jason Roland, your SCS account representative, points out, it took only a phone call from you to clarify expectations and the “misunderstanding” has not occurred again.

As an information-technology program manager with the Society, the role of the privacy professional is only one of many you play. In all matters, however, you must consider the financial bottom line. While these problems with privacy protection have been significant, the additional revenues of sales of items such as shirts and coffee cups from the store have been significant. The Society’s operating budget is slim, and all sources of revenue are essential.

Now a new challenge has arisen. Jason called to say that starting in two weeks, the customer data from the store would now be stored on a data cloud. “The good news,” he says, “is that we have found a low-cost provider in Finland, where the data would also be held. So, while there may be a small charge to pass through to you, it won’t be exorbitant, especially considering the advantages of a cloud.”

Lately, you have been hearing about cloud computing and you know it’s fast becoming the new paradigm for various applications. However, you have heard mixed reviews about the potential impacts on privacy protection. You begin to research and discover that a number of the leading cloud service providers have signed a letter of intent to work together on shared conventions and technologies for privacy protection. You make a note to find out if Jason’s Finnish provider is signing on.

What process can best answer your Questions about the vendor’s data security safeguards?

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SCENARIO

Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Your organization, the Chicago (U.S.)-based Society for Urban Greenspace, has used the same vendor to operate all aspects of an online store for several years. As a small nonprofit, the Society cannot afford the higher-priced options, but you have been relatively satisfied with this budget vendor, Shopping Cart Saver (SCS). Yes, there have been some issues. Twice, people who purchased items from the store have had their credit card information used fraudulently subsequent to transactions on your site, but in neither case did the investigation reveal with certainty that the Society’s store had been hacked. The thefts could have been employee-related.

Just as disconcerting was an incident where the organization discovered that SCS had sold

information it had collected from customers to third parties. However, as Jason Roland, your SCS account representative, points out, it took only a phone call from you to clarify expectations and the “misunderstanding” has not occurred again.

As an information-technology program manager with the Society, the role of the privacy professional is only one of many you play. In all matters, however, you must consider the financial bottom line. While these problems with privacy protection have been significant, the additional revenues of sales of items such as shirts and coffee cups from the store have been significant. The Society’s operating budget is slim, and all sources of revenue are essential.

Now a new challenge has arisen. Jason called to say that starting in two weeks, the customer data from the store would now be stored on a data cloud. “The good news,” he says, “is that we have found a low-cost provider in Finland, where the data would also be held. So, while there may be a small charge to pass through to you, it won’t be exorbitant, especially considering the advantages of a cloud.”

Lately, you have been hearing about cloud computing and you know it’s fast becoming the new paradigm for various applications. However, you have heard mixed reviews about the potential impacts on privacy protection. You begin to research and discover that a number of the leading cloud service providers have signed a letter of intent to work together on shared conventions and technologies for privacy protection. You make a note to find out if Jason’s Finnish provider is signing on.

What process can best answer your Questions about the vendor’s data security safeguards?

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SCENARIO

Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

As the Director of data protection for Consolidated Records Corporation, you are justifiably pleased with your accomplishments so far. Your hiring was precipitated by warnings from regulatory agencies following a series of relatively minor data breaches that could easily have been worse. However, you have not had a reportable incident for the three years that you have been with the company. In fact, you consider your program a model that others in the data storage industry may note in their own program development.

You started the program at Consolidated from a jumbled mix of policies and procedures and worked toward coherence across departments and throughout operations. You were aided along the way by the program’s sponsor, the vice president of operations, as well as by a Privacy Team that started from a clear understanding of the need for change.

Initially, your work was greeted with little confidence or enthusiasm by the company’s "old guard" among both the executive team and frontline personnel working with data and interfacing with clients. Through the use of metrics that showed the costs not only of the breaches that had occurred, but also projections of the costs that easily could occur given the current state of operations, you soon had the leaders and key decision-makers largely on your side. Many of the other employees were more resistant, but face-to-face meetings with each department and the development of a baseline privacy training program achieved sufficient "buy-in" to begin putting the proper procedures into place.

Now, privacy protection is an accepted component of all current operations involving personal or protected data and must be part of the end product of any process of technological development. While your approach is not systematic, it is fairly effective.

You are left contemplating:

What must be done to maintain the program and develop it beyond just a data breach prevention program? How can you build on your success?

What are the next action steps?

How can Consolidated’s privacy training program best be further developed?

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SCENARIO

Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Penny has recently joined Ace Space, a company that sells homeware accessories online, as its new privacy officer. The company is based in California but thanks to some great publicity from a social media influencer last year, the company has received an influx of sales from the EU and has set up a regional office in Ireland to support this expansion. To become familiar with Ace Space’s practices and assess what her privacy priorities will be, Penny has set up meetings with a number of colleagues to hear about the work that they have been doing and their compliance efforts.

Penny’s colleague in Marketing is excited by the new sales and the company’s plans, but is also concerned that Penny may curtail some of the growth opportunities he has planned. He tells her “I heard someone in the breakroom talking about some new privacy laws but I really don’t think it affects us. We’re just a small company. I mean we just sell accessories online, so what’s the real risk?” He has also told her that he works with a number of small companies that help him get projects completed in a hurry. “We’ve got to meet our deadlines otherwise we lose money. I just sign the contracts and get Jim in finance to push through the payment. Reviewing the contracts takes time that we just don’t have.”

In her meeting with a member of the IT team, Penny has learned that although Ace Space has taken a number of precautions to protect its website from malicious activity, it has not taken the same level of care of its physical files or internal infrastructure. Penny’s colleague in IT has told her that a former employee lost an encrypted USB key with financial data on it when he left. The company nearly lost access to their customer database last year after they fell victim to a phishing attack. Penny is told by her IT colleague that the IT team “didn’t know what to do or who should do what. We hadn’t been trained on it but we’re a small team though, so it worked out OK in the end.” Penny is concerned that these issues will compromise Ace Space’s privacy and data protection.

Penny is aware that the company has solid plans to grow its international sales and will be working closely with the CEO to give the organization a data “shake up”. Her mission is to cultivate a strong privacy culture within the company.

Penny has a meeting with Ace Space’s CEO today and has been asked to give her first impressions

and an overview of her next steps.

What is the best way for Penny to understand the location, classification and processing purpose of the personal data Ace Space has?

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SCENARIO

Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Penny has recently joined Ace Space, a company that sells homeware accessories online, as its new privacy officer. The company is based in California but thanks to some great publicity from a social media influencer last year, the company has received an influx of sales from the EU and has set up a regional office in Ireland to support this expansion. To become familiar with Ace Space’s practices and assess what her privacy priorities will be, Penny has set up meetings with a number of colleagues to hear about the work that they have been doing and their compliance efforts.

Penny’s colleague in Marketing is excited by the new sales and the company’s plans, but is also concerned that Penny may curtail some of the growth opportunities he has planned. He tells her “I heard someone in the breakroom talking about some new privacy laws but I really don’t think it affects us. We’re just a small company. I mean we just sell accessories online, so what’s the real risk?” He has also told her that he works with a number of small companies that help him get projects completed in a hurry. “We’ve got to meet our deadlines otherwise we lose money. I just sign the contracts and get Jim in finance to push through the payment. Reviewing the contracts takes time that we just don’t have.”

In her meeting with a member of the IT team, Penny has learned that although Ace Space has taken a number of precautions to protect its website from malicious activity, it has not taken the same level of care of its physical files or internal infrastructure. Penny’s colleague in IT has told her that a former employee lost an encrypted USB key with financial data on it when he left. The company nearly lost access to their customer database last year after they fell victim to a phishing attack. Penny is told by her IT colleague that the IT team “didn’t know what to do or who should do what. We hadn’t been trained on it but we’re a small team though, so it worked out OK in the end.” Penny is concerned that these issues will compromise Ace Space’s privacy and data protection.

Penny is aware that the company has solid plans to grow its international sales and will be working closely with the CEO to give the organization a data “shake up”. Her mission is to cultivate a strong privacy culture within the company.

Penny has a meeting with Ace Space’s CEO today and has been asked to give her first impressions

and an overview of her next steps.

What is the best way for Penny to understand the location, classification and processing purpose of the personal data Ace Space has?

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