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The Sedona Conference Announces the Formation of Working Group 11 on Data Security and Privacy Liability

The Sedona Conference is pleased to announce the formation of Working Group 11 (WG11) on Data Security and Privacy Liability.


Phoenix – WEBWIRE –

"Almost daily, we hear of data breaches involving retail store chains, web sites, and government agencies,” said WG11 Steering Committee co-chair Al Saikali, a partner at Shook, Hardy and Bacon. “Some of these are accidental, some involve data theft, and many of them create legal exposure.” According to Saikali, “with the increase in electronic information, organizations must pay attention to the laws and trends governing how they may collect, store, use, and dispose of sensitive information."

The Sedona Conference is pleased to announce the formation of Working Group 11 (WG11) on Data Security and Privacy Liability.   WG11 will bring together lawyers, judges, policy makers, security experts, technologists, and business leaders to identify and develop principles and best practices that will constructively resolve issues surrounding data security and privacy liability.      
 
“Almost daily, we hear of data breaches involving retail store chains, web sites, and government agencies,” said WG11 Steering Committee co-chair Al Saikali, a partner in the Miami office of Shook, Hardy and Bacon. “Some of these are accidental, some involve data theft, and many of them create legal exposure.”  According to Saikali, “with the increase in electronic information, organizations must pay attention to the laws and trends governing how they may collect, store, use, and dispose of sensitive information.”
 
“The damages suffered by the victims of a data breach – individual and organizational – range from loss of privacy, to financial loss, to reputational and business harm, to loss of trade secrets and other intellectual property,” added WG11 co-chair Jay Edelson, managing partner of Edelson PC in Chicago. “Privacy liability may manifest itself in the form of civil lawsuits or regulatory actions alleging violations of state and federal laws, such as HIPAA, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Section 5 of the FTC Act, and state consumer protection laws.” 
 
“For businesses today, one of the biggest challenges is protecting the privacy of the individuals whose personally identifiable information, patterns of behavior, preferences and buying habits, medical risks, and even physical locations can be filtered from the data the entities collect, store, and transmit.  And you simply cannot adequately protect that information and those privacy interests without understanding the technological and legal environment in which we operate,” said WG11 Steering Committee member, Matthew Fitzsimmons, Assistant Attorney General in the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office.
 
Out of these myriad overlapping obligations, WG11 will build on the success of Sedona’s ten preceding Working Groups and will develop data security and privacy guides that help organizations take action before and after a data breach to minimize their legal exposure.  These guides will draw primarily from data security and privacy legislation, civil litigation, and regulatory actions.  The Working Group will also provide guidance regarding data security and privacy class action developments, including liability, damages, and class certification issues. 
 
The idea for this Working Group emerged from a Sedona conference held at Del Mar, California, on October 24 and 25 of last year.
 
The Working Group will be open to anyone interested in this subject, and will meet virtually over the next several months. The first face-to-face meeting of WG11 is tentatively planned for November 5-7, at The Sedona Conference’s “All Voices” Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
 
The activities of WG11 will be guided by a select Steering Committee, chosen to be balanced and representative of the various stakeholders involved in the area of data security and privacy liability.  The members of the WG11 Steering Committee are: 

  • Al Saikali – Partner, Shook Hardy & Bacon, Miami, FL (co-chair)
  • Jay Edelson – Managing Partner, Edelson PC, Chicago, IL (co-chair)
  • Linda Clark – Deputy Counsel, Data Security & Information Compliance, Reed Elsevier, Boca Raton, FL
  • Conor Crowley – Partner, Crowley Law Office, McLean, VA
  • Corey M. Dennis – Associate Counsel & Privacy Officer, Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC (PPD), Wilmington, NC
  • Patrice Ettinger – Chief Privacy Officer, Pfizer, Inc., New York, NY
  • Matthew Fitzsimmons – Assistant Attorney General, Connecticut Attorney General’s Office, Hartford, CT
  • Serge Jorgensen – Founder and CTO, Sylint, Sarasota, FL
  • Matthew Meade – Partner, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, Pittsburgh, PA
  • Kim Peretti – Partner, Alston & Bird, Washington, DC
  • Rose Ring – Partner, Munger, Tolles & Olson, San Francisco, CA
  • Drew Sorrell – Partner, Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed, P.A., Orlando, FL


To join WG11, please visit The Sedona Conference website at https://thesedonaconference.org/ and click on the “Working Group Series” icon.  Members of the Working Group Series are entitled to participate in any or all Sedona Working Group activities.
 
The Sedona Conference is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) research and educational institute dedicated to the advanced study of law and policy in the areas of antitrust law, complex litigation, and intellectual property rights. The mission of The Sedona Conference is to drive the reasoned and just advancement of law and policy by stimulating ongoing dialogue amongst leaders of the bench and bar to achieve consensus on critical issues. The Sedona Conference brings together the brightest minds in a dialogue-based, think-tank setting with the goal of creating practical solutions and recommendations of immediate benefit to the civil justice system. The findings of these Working Groups are developed and enhanced through an extended peer review process, and the resulting content is widely published in conjunction with legal and professional educational programs. The Sedona Conference succeeds through the generous contributions of time by its Working Group members, and is able to fund its operations primarily through the financial support of its members, conference registrants, and sponsors.

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