Data Privacy Compliance Audits Target Small Businesses
As consumer awareness of data privacy issues increases, companies that don’t take their clients’ data privacy seriously are getting hit harder and harder. In healthcare, a Florida healthcare provider paid a $5.5 million fine (a HIPAA record) earlier this year for allowing more than 115,000 patient records to be improperly accessed and disclosed. Last year, Ashley Madison paid almost $1.6 million to settle charges related to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement of data privacy laws, after the online “cheating” site’s virtually non-existent cybersecurity practices allowed the compromise of all its 36 million users worldwide.