On June 28, 2018 the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced parallel criminal and civil charges against Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, a former software development manager, for selling his shares of Equifax stock before Equifax publicly announced that it had suffered an immense data breach. 

As cybersecurity regulatory frameworks mature, the move has been toward risk-adjusted security requirements rather than prescriptive controls mandated by a legislature or administrative agency.  This makes sense, of course, for two primary reasons. 

Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, colleges and universities with endowments over $500,000 per student are now required to pay a 1.4% excise tax on investment earnings. 

The IRS has now provide guidance that will take a bit of the bite out of this new tax -- at least at first.

So far 2018 has been a whirlwind of cyber regulatory activity, from the commencement of GDPR to new state-law data breach requirements to the New York State Department of Financial Services first compliance self-certification deadline. The complexity of the cyber legal landscape is only increasing, and in an effort to keep our clients ahead of the regulatory curve, the HSE Privacy and Data Security team has been on the road, spreading the word about cyber regulatory risk.

On April 12, 2018, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the New York State Budget Bill which includes several significant requirements to address workplace sexual harassment.