Following breaches, Utah Senate passes data protection law

The Utah State Senate has passed legislation that would set best practices for the storing and transmitting on state servers of residents' personally identifiable information (PII). Sen. Stuart Reid, R-Utah, began drafting the bill last year, following a massive breach when a Utah Department of Health server was hacked. Attackers accessed the Medicaid records of nearly 800,000 individuals, including the senator's wife. Among those affected, 280,000 had their Social Security numbers compromised. The bill, which will now move on to the House for a vote, would require Utah's CIO and the governor's office to select a group of experts who would identify the best practices.