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.

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