DataBank Sends Security Experts to Washington for Federal Level Insight and Education
DataBank’s Chief Information Security Officer, Mark Houpt, Senior Account Executive, Tonya Phillips, and Vice President of Sales, John Solensky, joined a panel discussion in Washington, DC recently. It marked an important step in helping inform policy decisions on protecting critical data, as well as making sure that public infrastructure is in place. The panel was hosted by Technology Councils of North America, a group that represents technology and trade organizations.
The panel, entitled “Creating a Secure and Resilient Public Infrastructure”, included discussion about the need for secure technology in both the public and private sectors. The proliferation of gathering, storing and using data at organizations makes security of that data paramount. Among the goals of the panel: to acknowledge the growing sophistication of bad actors. Unfortunately, right now that sophistication is outpacing what can be done to protect businesses and organizations. The effort to thwart those bad actors is part of a larger commitment by the federal government to prevent breaches and protect data.
With the European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) serving as a potential model, the United States is taking a deeper look into what data protection and privacy mean. With security breaches in the headlines more frequently, organizations ultimately want to prevent such attacks. Bipartisan legislation, introduced last year by U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) would help reform data privacy and protection nationally.
“Americans deserve certain assurances regarding how businesses are collecting and using their personally identifiable information. As chairman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee overseeing consumer protection, I have conducted public hearings and made inquiries to hold businesses accountable and gain a better understanding of how they are using consumers’ data while working to improve federal laws to protect consumers in a rapidly developing technological age. Congress needs to pass comprehensive legislation that protects consumers’ data privacy and work to promote responsible regulatory changes that empower consumers rather than deceiving them.” – Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS)
Mr. Houpt’s contribution comes with more than 25 years of extensive information security and information technology experience in a wide range of industries and institutions. Members of the Kansas City Tech Council also made the trip to Washington to speak with officials at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.
DataBank is committed to playing a vital role in data protection. The company offers easy, cost-effective, and secure solutions to save critical business information. Learn more from Disaster Recovery as a Service to offsite data storage of backup repositories to Office365 backups at www.databank.com.
