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Every day for one hour, Olympic-level athletes all over the world have an appointment they cannot break. The swimmer Dara Torres, a 12-time Olympic medalist, squeezes her hour into training, running errands and caring for her 3-year-old daughter. The curler Nicole Joraanstad schedules her hour at dawn, but says it often interrupts her sleep. The Olympic decathlon champion Bryan Clay makes himself available at night, when he is most likely to be home with family. Since Jan. 1, Olympic-level athletes have had to schedule their daily availability - hour and place - three months in advance so drug testers can find them, according to new World Anti-Doping Agency rules. And violating those rules can have serious repercussions. Three missed drug tests within an 18-month period during an athlete's appointed hour count as a positive drug test and can result in a one- to two-year ban from competition. Because the element of surprise is crucial to effective testing, athletes are also subject to random out-of-competition tests at any time. And they are tested at competitions. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee said, "Sports today has a price to pay for suspicion." But some athletes say the rules have gone too far. "It's absolutely too much," Torres said in a telephone interview. "Why make this more cumbersome when we do so much already? We're at the point where we have to find a middle ground." Never before has there been so much protest regarding out-of-competition testing. Athletes in nearly every sport as well as organizations like FIFA, soccer's international governing body, have publicly criticized the doping agency's regulations. At least one lawsuit challenging the rules is in court. Sixty-five Belgian athletes, including the world-class Quick Step cycling team and its star Tom Boonen, filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that the new rules violate European privacy laws.

" One of the biggest security risks that companies face is employees who fall victim to phishing e-mails, which can lead to stolen log-in credentials and virus infections. SocialPET is a simple Web-based testing tool that lets businesses run their own phishing tests to find out which employees understand security procedures and which are at risk to falling prey to real phishing scams. "

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that it has reopened the public comment period on a proposal for a model privacy form that financial institutions could use to provide disclosures required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). The commission is reopening the comment period in order to solicit public comment on the results of recent quantitative consumer testing conducted to evaluate the form. In March 2007, pursuant to the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006, the SEC, together with seven other federal regulators, proposed a model privacy form designed to allow consumers easily to compare privacy practices of financial institutions. The jointly developed model form uses easily readable type font and is designed to be succinct and comprehensible. Under the proposal, financial institutions that chose to use the model privacy form would satisfy GLBA disclosure requirements and could take advantage of a legal "safe harbor." The SEC has reopened the comment period on the proposal to provide all persons who are interested in this matter an opportunity to comment on the results of the recent testing of the model privacy form.

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If practice makes perfect, it's no wonder commercial pilot Chesley B. (Sully) Sullenberger III was able to save the day last week, guiding a malfunctioning jetliner over New York City and landing it safely in the Hudson River. It turns out Sullenberger was well trained for the job and had been studying crisis management. The Associated Press' Amy Westfeldt says Sullenberger, 57, of Danville, California, is a former fighter pilot who runs a safety consulting firm in addition to flying commercial aircraft. Westfeldt says Sullenberger is president of Safety Reliability Methods, a California firm that uses "the ultra-safe world of commercial aviation" as a basis for safety consulting in other fields. "When a plane is getting ready to crash with a lot of people who trust you, it is a test," Civil engineer Robert Bea told Westfeldt. "Sully proved the end of the road for that test. He had studied it, he had rehearsed it, he had taken it to his heart." The pilot "did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everybody got out," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told AP. "He walked the plane twice after everybody else was off, and tried to verify that there was nobody else on board, and he assures us there was not. He was the last one up the aisle and he made sure that there was nobody behind him."

Taking genetic tests to assess potential health risks could mean cheaper medical insurance even if the results are not disclosed, a senior industry executive has told The Times. Customers who take personal DNA scans will pay lower premiums because insurers believe that they encourage a healthier lifestyle, according to Gil Baldwin, the managing director of Norwich Union Healthcare. The advent of tests for DNA variants that affect common disorders such as diabetes and heart disease has prompted fears of discrimination and the creation of a "genetic underclass" who cannot buy cover. Mr Baldwin insisted that his company did not see genetics as a tool for cherry picking low-risk customers but as a way of helping them to manage and reduce their risk of disease with the aim of lowering costs for both parties. In an interview with The Times, he said that people who take genetic screening are likely to act on the results and therefore present a much better risk profile. Insurers will reflect this in premiums, regardless of whether results are disclosed.

The next wave of hacking into computers and stealing data will not be requests or code coming from remote points across the Web, security experts are warning. Instead, the most sophisticated Trojan Horses appearing on Wall Street financial systems may be threaded into the silicon of integrated circuits by design, their malicious instructions baked right into the tiny physical aspects and intricate mapping of the chip itself, according to scientists and academics working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the White House and the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center in Dulles, Va. Detecting such malware after a chip is fabricated will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, these experts say, because the microchips that run servers have millions to billions of transistors in them. Adding a few hundred or even just tens of transistors can compromise an integrated circuit can serve attackers' purposes and escape notice. "You can never really test every single combination on the chip. Testing a billion transistors would take a very long time. It would be very difficult to detect hardware Trojans without having some idea of what you're looking for to begin with," said Scott C. Smith, associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Arkansas, co-author of a 2007 paper which described a "Hardware Threat Modeling Concept for Trustable Integrated Circuits." Tweaking chips themselves will make them prone to manipulate data, shut down a critical function, or turn a system into a bugged phone that steals and relays vital information, the experts say.

A complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission by consumer groups seeking greater privacy protection for mobile Internet users could become a crucial test for the Obama administration's commitment to Internet privacy, a researcher has said. A policy statement published on then-President-elect Barack Obama's transitional Web site said he plans to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." Need to review your privacy policy or guide your clients in preparing a privacy framework? Download a copy of the Generally Accepted Privacy Principles.

In April 2008, the blogosphere was abuzz with news that someone was auctioning then-candidate Barack Obama's half-eaten breakfast on eBay, along with silverware purported to contain his DNA. This episode led some to speculate that the DNA of one or both of the presidential candidates would be surreptitiously analysed and their genetic information broadcast before the election for all to examine. Although this scenario did not take place during this election cycle, it is well within the realm of technological possibility. Every day, we shed millions of cells during ordinary activities - licking envelopes, blowing our nose, combing hair. These cells may seem to be mere human detritus, but our biological trash could be a gold mine for information prospectors looking for clues to our health or ancestry. And as an investigation in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine found, there already is a vibrant industry offering covert DNA tests to confirm infidelity and parentage. We have reached this point through technological advances in laboratory genetic analysis, dramatically reduced costs for the analysis and an almost complete absence of rules governing the legal status of "abandoned DNA."

"A federal law designed to prevent employers and health insurers from discriminating against an individual based on their genetic predisposition to disease took effect late last month, signaling a new era where intermingling genetic advances and privacy concerns create new challenges in health care. But left out of the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, commonly known as GINA, were privacy protections for individuals seeking long-term care, disability and life insurance coverage. Each of those areas was left up to the individual states. At least 10 states regulate the use of genetic information in long-term care insurance. But in California, privacy protections were left to expire by lawmakers in January 2008. Mark Billingsley, spokesman for state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, said in an e-mail that there "appears to be a giant loophole" in California's insurance code regarding long-term care insurance and genetic privacy protections. He said he couldn't identify a single provision in the state code that would preclude a private insurer from requesting such a test for underwriting purposes. "

"A Texas bank is suing a customer hit by an $800,000 cybertheft incident in a case that could test the extent to which customers should be held responsible for protecting their online accounts from compromises. The incident, which was first reported by blogger Brian Krebs this week, involves Lubbock-based PlainsCapital bank and its customer Hillary Machinery Inc. of Plano. In November, unknown attackers based in Romania and Italy initiated a series of unauthorized wire transfers from Hillary's bank accounts and depleted it by $801,495. About $600,000 of the amount was later recovered by PlainsCapital. Hillary demanded that the bank repay it the rest of the stolen money. In a letter to the bank in December, Hillary claimed that the theft happened only because PlainsCapital had failed to implement adequate security measures. PlainsCapital promptly filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas asking the court to certify that its security procedures were "commercially reasonable." In its complaint, the bank noted that it had made every effort to recover the stolen money."

Bank sues theft victim in pre-emptive strike

The European Commission threatened Britain with sanctions on Tuesday for allowing an Internet service provider to use a new advertising technology to track the Web movements of customers. The European telecommunications commissioner, Viviane Reding, said that use of a tracking tool created by Phorm violated European privacy laws. The country's largest service provider, BT, acknowledged last April that it used the tool without customers' consent in 2006 and 2007, Ms. Reding said. "European privacy rules are crystal clear: a person's information can only be used with their prior consent," Ms. Reding said. The case could become a test for the limits of ads that aim at online behavior. Supporters of the practice say it has the potential to transform advertising by allowing marketers to show Internet users only ads that are considered relevant to them, based on their surfing habits.

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European Union's move indicates growing government concern over how Internet companies are using individuals' private data The European Commission began legal action against the U.K. Tuesday over its failure to protect Internet users from Phorm -- a covert behavioral advertising technology tested by the U.K.'s biggest fixed line operator, BT, in 2006 and 2007. The move signals growing concern in Brussels over the way new Internet-based technologies are using people's personal data. In addition to taking legal action against the U.K., the Commission also issued a general warning to all 27 E.U. countries to uphold privacy laws, especially regarding social-networking Web sites and users of RFID (radio frequency identification) technologies. In Canada, the federal government has even proposed a legislation that will provide law enforcement agents sweeping powers to obtain user information from ISPs. The Commission, the executive body of the European Union responsible for upholding laws, said the U.K. had failed to enforce E.U. data protection and privacy rules, because broadband Internet subscribers were not informed that their browsing was being tracked.

Cable operators will sit in the hot seat Thursday as Congress reviews their plans to roll out targeted advertising amid fears that consumer privacy could be infringed if the companies were to track and record viewing habits. The House subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet will hold a hearing that will look at new uses for digital set-top boxes, the devices that control channels and perform other tasks on the TV screen. Cable TV companies plan to use such boxes to collect data and direct ads more targeted to individual preferences. "We have recently called on Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate cable's new interactive targeted TV ad system on both antitrust and privacy grounds," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. He's concerned about Canoe Ventures, a consortium formed by the nation's six largest cable companies to oversee the rollout of targeted and interactive ads nationally. Chester worries that Canoe will track what consumers do in their homes. Currently, cable companies aim their ads based strictly on geography. Now, cable's goal is to take the Internet's success with targeted ads and transfer that to the TV medium. Thus, a household that watches a lot of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel eventually could be targeted for theme parks promotions. This type of targeting is something broadcast TV can't do. For starters, Canoe plans to offer ads this summer that consider demographic factors such as age and income. Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. and Cablevision Systems Corp. of Bethpage, N.Y., also have been testing or rolling out targeted ads outside the consortium. But cable operators are wary about being seen as trampling on consumer privacy and reiterate that they don't plan to target based on any personally identifiable information, such as someone's name and address. Canoe said it doesn't have plans this year to use set-top box data for ads. Instead, the first ads it pl

By now, many employees are uncomfortably aware that their every keystroke at work, from email on office computers to text messages on company phones, can be monitored legally by their employers. What employees typically don't expect is for the company to spy on them while on password-protected sites using nonwork computers. But even that privacy could be in jeopardy. A case brewing in federal court in New Jersey pits bosses against two employees who were complaining about their workplace on an invite-only discussion group on MySpace.com, a social-networking site owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The case tests whether a supervisor who managed to log into the forum -- and then fired employees who badmouthed supervisors and customers there -- had the right to do so. The case has some legal and privacy experts concerned that companies are intruding into areas that their employees had considered off limits. "The question is whether employees have a right to privacy in their non-work-created communications with each other. And I would think the answer is that they do," said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment expert and partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York. The legal landscape is murky. For the most part, employers don't need a reason to fire nonunion workers. But state laws in California, New York and Connecticut protect employees who engage in lawful, off-duty activities from being fired or disciplined, according to a report prepared by attorneys at the firm Proskauer Rose LLP. While private conversations might be covered under those laws, none of the statutes specifically addresses social networking or blogging. Thus, privacy advocates expect to see more of these legal challenges. In February, three police officers in Harrison, N.Y., were suspended after they allegedly made lewd remarks about the town mayor on a Facebook account. The officers mistakenly thought the remarks were protected with a password, but city officials view

Even a booster of electronic systems like David Blumenthal, who just started his Washington post as the national coordinator of health IT, points to a myriad of challenges when it comes to digitizing the nation's medical records. Just take a look at his piece this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which he cites technical concerns and worries about patient privacy, among other things. In an interview with the WSJ, he said problems can crop up if the systems are installed too quickly and without enough technical support. There are plenty of potential advantages that electronic records can bring, from helping hospitals and doctors get information quickly on patients' medical histories to making catches when two drugs are being prescribed that may interact dangerously together. But there are also risks: Take a look at a study in Pediatrics that cites the case of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, which initially saw a rise in the death rate for certain patients after computerizing its order-entry system, perhaps because it took longer to begin their treatment. (The hospital told the WSJ the study was "flawed," adding the mortality rate had fallen since then.) The WSJ also cites the case of a patient who was initially given an incorrect diagnosis based on a mix-up involving electronic records and a test result for another patient. Health Blog Question of the Day: What's been your experience with electronic records? Do they prevent safety problems or create new risks?

April 13, 2009 (Computerworld) The PCI standard, long touted as one of the private sector's strongest attempts to regulate itself on IT security, is increasingly being slammed by critics who claim that the rules aren't doing enough to protect credit and debit card data. And amid all the complaints, Visa Inc. - the standard's biggest proponent - is working one-on-one with banks and retailers to test new security measures that go beyond the controls currently mandated by PCI. What it all adds up to is a new sense of uncertainty about the future of the specification, which is formally known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS. Created by Visa and other credit card companies, the PCI rules will have been in effect for four years as of June 30. But with breaches of card data continuing and questions about the standard's effectiveness on the rise, PCI DSS is showing signs of coming apart at the seams.

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There is an old axiom in marketing circles that it costs more money to acquire new customers than to retain and service your old ones. In this precarious financial environment, the focus for many companies is now on keeping the existing customers satisfied, rather than worrying only about adding new ones to the fold. Since the business environment has slowed for now, showing your clients additional "value added" services rather than simply a lower price, for example, will be critical. Companies should be taking an introspective look for differentiating factors in the areas of security and privacy "value," and how they can leverage what they uncover - a competitive advantage. How can an organization best position their privacy and security programs to be used as a competitive advantage? First, of course, you need to ensure that your privacy and security program is robust, well-tested, formally documented and meets or exceeds whatever legislation that your company is subject to or regulated against. It is also important to give your customers a point of reference about the validity of your programs so they easily translate the value into a currency they recognize. Further, you should take advantage of any other internal and external audits, assessments and oversights that you can reasonably share with external parties by crafting the results of these documents as a consumable for external parties. It has been my experience that clients, especially their security teams, really appreciate this effort. Another innovative way to deliver a competitive advantage today is in the realm of vendor management. This discipline is quickly becoming an increasingly high-profile topic of discussion and interest between clients, customers and their service providers. The onus is on you anyway to demonstrate oversight of your third-party service provider(s). This is where you should also have the "value add" conversation and validate why your clients placed their trus

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The reality of any new technology, security or otherwise, rarely lives up to its promise. Once you move past the bright sheen of the product brochures and top-level user interfaces, only the practicalities of implementing the product in the real world remain. This is especially true of newer technologies we have little prior experience with, where our product expectations are defined by marketing, the press, and the rare peer reference. It's only after these tools are tested in the real world, under full production conditions, that we really start learning how to either best implement them, or kick them back to the vendor for a little more polish (and a compelling business use). Data loss prevention (DLP) is one of the most promising, and least understood, security technologies to emerge during the last few years. It dangles promises of ubiquitous content protection before our eyes, with shadows of complexity and costs glooming over its shoulder. As with everything, the reality is somewhere in-between. We've interviewed dozens of DLP users (including our own contacts, random volunteers and vendor references) to find out how DLP works in the trenches of the real world. The result is a collection of lessons learned and use cases to help you avoid common pitfalls while deriving maximum value. Lesson 1: Users are confused by a confusing market Lesson 2: Full DLP solutions take more effort to deploy, but are more effective and easier to manage Lesson 3: Set the right expectations and workflow early Lesson 4: Poor identity management hinders good DLP Lesson 5: False positives are a manageable concern Lesson 6: Progressive deployments are most effective Lesson 7: Endpoint DLP is still more limited than network or discovery Lesson 8: Content discovery is hot

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Last week, the government took another step toward closing a legal loophole in federal privacy and security rules for emerging Health 2.0 information technology applications by issuing proposed rules aimed at covering an estimated 900 companies and organizations offering personal health records and electronic systems connected to them. The Federal Trade Commission was careful to point out its new interim proposed rule on federal breach notification requirements for the developers of electronic PHR systems did not apply to covered organizations or their business associates as defined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, heretofore the key federal privacy and security regulation. The FTC, operating under new authority given it by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, noted that its new rule seeks to cover previously unregulated entities that are part of a Health 2.0 product mix. FTC staff estimates that about 200 PHR vendors, another 500 related entities and 200 third-party service providers will be subject to the new breach notification rule. The staffers estimate that the 900 affected companies and organizations, on average, will experience 11 breaches each per year at a total cost of about $1 million per group, per year. Costs include investigating the breach, notifying consumers and establishing toll-free numbers for explaining the breaches and providing additional information to consumers. Pam Dixon, founder and executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said that this isn't the first involvement of the FTC in healthcare-related regulation, noting the consumer protection agency joined with the Food and Drug Administration in a joint statement on the marketing of direct-to-consumer genetic tests. The FTC also has worked in the field of healthcare competition. She noted the compliance deadline with the FTC's "red flag rules" on provider organizations that provide consumer credit to patients for installment payment