Peter Sloan

Photo of Peter Sloan

Peter advises clients on how best to retain, secure, preserve, and dispose of information. He helps clients throughout the United States create, validate, and update retention schedules; implement compliant information management policies and processes; and defensibly dispose of information. Peter also counsels clients on data security compliance and breach response readiness, and he works with clients to manage data breach response.

Peter has served clients across a broad range of industries, including:

  • Financial Services (national and state-chartered banks, investment companies, investment advisers, broker-dealers, tax preparation companies, insurance companies, and government-sponsored enterprises)
  • Health Care (health systems and hospitals, physician practices, pharmacy and pharmacy benefit management companies, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, and medical equipment manufacturers)
  • Energy (power and gas utilities, power transmission companies, oil and gas pipeline companies, and exploration and production companies)
  • Higher Education
  • Engineering and Construction
  • Manufacturing
  • Retail
  • Technology
  • Transportation
Connect: Read more about Peter Sloan
Firm/Organization: Husch Blackwell LLP, Information Governance Group
Blogs: Byte Back, Food & Ag Law Insights, Healthcare Law Insights, Information Bytes, Technology, Manufacturing & Transportation Industry Insider

Latest Articles

The “business case” for information governance often focuses solely on quantifying specific costs for data management and exposures for data security and ediscovery.  Number crunching is of course important, but it misses something bigger, more strategic, and ultimately more crucial to the organization – its brand.  Companies, regardless of industry, are fundamentally in the information business.  It follows that how an organization manages its information assets reveals how the organization manages itself.  And that matters, a…
Having too much data causes problems beyond needless storage costs, workplace inefficiencies, and uncontrolled litigation expenses.  Keeping data without a legal or business reason also exacerbates data security exposures.  To put it bluntly, businesses that tolerate troves of unnecessary data are playing cybersecurity roulette … with even larger caliber ammunition. Surprisingly few U.S. data security laws and standards expressly require that protected data be compliantly disposed of once legal and business-driven retention periods expire.   PCI DSS v3.2.1, Requirement 3.1, provides “[k]eep cardholder data…
Being a CISO is a tough gig.  The perpetual deluge of news items on hack after hack, breach after breach, has finally conveyed that data security is an imperative for all companies, large and small.  But the perception still lingers that the Chief Information Security Officer (or her InfoSec team) will single-handedly prevent breaches at “our” company – and if one should occur, will take care of the response.  For some CISOs, it may feel like High Noon, all over again. This is unfair to the…
Dr. Stephen Covey reminded us that “important” is not the same thing as “urgent.”  Records retention reminds us that important is not the same thing as exciting.  I get it – records retention schedules are boring.  But the fact remains that literally thousands of records retention requirements apply to your organization’s information.  I know, because my firm finds and tracks these laws as part of our decades of retention schedule work for clients across industries.  And your regulators…
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In today’s landmark ruling, the Illinois Supreme Court held that private lawsuits seeking statutory damages and injunctions for violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) may be pursued by “aggrieved” persons without alleging any actual injury or adverse effect. BIPA, enacted in Illinois back in 2008, was the seminal state statutory privacy law for individuals’ biometric data.  The law protects individuals’ biometric identifiers (a retina or iris scan, voiceprint, or scan of…
“If your clients don’t have a records management system, they may as well take their money out into the parking lot and set it on fire.” – Former U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge John Facciola We all know that ediscovery is expensive, and various research reports have so confirmed. The definitive Rand study, Where the Money Goes: Understanding Litigant Expenditures for Producing Electronic Discovery, found that median costs for collection, processing, and review are $17,507…
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As technical security improves, human security vulnerabilities are increasingly in the bulls-eye.  For a fresh look at social engineering, and how best to defend against it, there’s no better source than a hacker.  So, I reached out to Cliff Smith, Ethical Hacker & CISSP at Parameter Security, for his take on the current social engineering battleground.  Here’s what he shared: Confidence games have been around forever.  Is there anything fundamentally different about social engineering…
Whew – we’ve survived yet another round of states enacting or amending their PII breach notification laws.  If a trial lawyer’s vacation is the time between her question and the witness’s answer, a data security lawyer’s vacation is when state legislatures are out of session. Back in 2002, California enacted the first state law mandating notification of individuals whose personally identifiable information (PII) is breached.  Now every state has followed suit, with the final two holdouts, Alabama…
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Last week’s post explored why law firms need data security policies.  Before we move on, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another policy that’s absolutely crucial for the law firm’s data security posture – a records management policy, coupled with an up-to-date and legally validated records retention schedule. What does a records retention schedule have to do with data security?  Simply this – keeping data without a legal or business reason exacerbates data security…
You’d think, among all types of businesses, that law firms would be at the front of the pack in having a data security policy.  After all, law firms regularly tell their clients how important it is to have effective policies in place for legal compliance and risk management.  And law firms certainly possess large volumes of valuable data, such as confidential client information and individual’s personal data, and are subject to a daunting array of…