This blog has covered numerous cases of hackers impersonating parties to commercial transactions, and rerouting funds meant to pay for equipment or services. Fraudsters have impersonated high-level executives to induce accounting employees to transfer funds. Fraudsters impersonated a company’s vendor, and provided fraudulent wiring instructions for the company to send payments. That same kind of fraud led to litigation between a company and its insurance company over whether there was coverage for stolen payments.…

Dickinson Law is pleased to announced that attorney Bryan O’Neill has been chosen to receive the 2019 Rising Star Award from The Iowa Defense Counsel Association (IDCA). O’Neill, a member of the firm’s Employment and Labor Law Group, will receive the award at the IDCA’s 55th annual meeting  on September 12th.   The award is the second year in a row that a Dickinson attorney has been honored; Cybersecurity, Data Breach & Privacy Practice Chair…

Dickinson Law is pleased to announce that 19 of the firms’ attorneys have been selected for inclusion in the 2020 Edition of The Best Lawyers in America®.  Attorney F. Richard Lyford was also recognized by Best Lawyers® as the Litigation – Real Estate  “Lawyer of the Year” in Des Moines. Since it was first published in 1983, Best Lawyers has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence and is the oldest and…

Many people view cryptocurrencies as a highly disruptive technology destined to change the economy as we know it. What they will disrupt, however, remains to be seen. In the meantime, at least a couple of federal regulators—SEC and IRS—do not see much of anything new about cryptocurrencies, and are working to apply existing statutes and regulations to cryptocurrencies. This blog has previously covered SEC decisions which clearly and consistently concluded existing exchange and securities…

Payment card system breaches can cause millions of dollars in damages. Consumer losses are generally minimal, because Regulation E obliges card issuing banks to generally reimburse consumers for fraud. There are nevertheless millions of dollars of damages associated with responding to payment card breaches in the form of fraud reimbursements and card re-issuance costs. These damages are apportioned among the various banks and card networks involved in processing credit and debit card payments. That was the…

Well-intentioned organizations trying to implement cybersecurity best practices can quickly become discouraged by the ocean of rules, guidance, and standards. The National Institute of Science and Technology (“NIST”), the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (“FFIEC”), National Association of Insurance Commissioners (“NAIC”), and the New York Department of Financial Services (“NYDFS”), to name a few, all have cybersecurity rules and guidance. While many of the recommendations and requirements among this alphabet soup of agencies overlap each…

One of the easiest ways to prevent a cybersecurity incident is to ensure that software patches are implemented. Despite this straightforward technical advice, many organizations still fail to routinely and regularly implement software patches. The New York Times recently reported on one of the consequences of that failure when it reported on the City of Baltimore’s three-week long ransomware attack. According to the Times, a key component of the malware attack is an exploit first…