Data Breaches and Victim Service Providers: Considerations for Developing Effective Policies
Privacy and confidentiality are core to the provision of victim services, and it is important that service providers are maintaining an infrastructure that supports this confidentiality.
In alignment with this value, the Federal funding that OCVA administers through the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) and the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) has a new funding requirement that all grantees must have a procedure in place in the event there is an actual breach or an imminent breach of personally identifiable information (PII).
There are resources available to help! Safety Net recently announced the launch of a new technical assistance paper on this topic, available here. This resource offers “considerations for programs to discuss in order to best manage data and create solid data breach policies that prioritize survivor safety and privacy.” As Safety Net shared, the resource was drafted in partnership with the Confidentiality Institute and the Resource Sharing Project.
Many organizations may already have a procedure in place. OCVA encourages you to take the time to review and refresh your procedures. For those organizations that are developing new procedures, please reach out for technical assistance. In addition to the Safety Net resource, OCVA strongly encourages working with your statewide coalitions.