Regulation: Massachusetts Information Privacy and Security Act
Abbreviation: MIPSA
Governs these parties: all organizations processing information on
residents or those doing business in Massachusetts
Enforced by: the office of the Attorney General (OAG)
The Massachusetts privacy act requires that every person that owns or licenses personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth must develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive information security program.
Complying with the MIPSA provides consumers with rights of access, deletion, correction, portability, and opt-out in relation to their personal data. It would, among other things require data controllers to publish a privacy notice for data subjects; require registration of data brokers, and require risk assessments for certain types of processing.
The rest of this document is designed to help our community understand MIPSA better by outlining the following information:
How it relates to cybersecurity
Amongst the provisions are the security requirements of all governed entities to:
- develop policies and procedures relating to employees and data. This should include information regarding disciplinary procedures if an employee is found in violation of the data security program.
- develop techniques to avoid security failures
- sufficiently encrypt sensitive data
How Coro handles compliance for you
At Coro, we've done the research thoroughly and regularly track updates to the regulation in order to ensure that you are implementing best practices in the areas we cover when we're protecting your systems.
The following table outlines the requirements described by MIPSA that Coro implements in conjunction with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Disclaimer: this table does not guarantee that your organization is compliant with these regulations. As a best practice, seek assistance from a certified auditor when completing your analysis.
|
Category |
Requirement |
How Coro does it |
|
Cloud Security & Privacy
|
Malware and ransomware injection |
Detects and remediates malware and ransomware files in cloud drives |
|
Cloud app account takeover |
Monitors access to cloud apps and user/admin activities on them |
|
|
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) |
Enforces multi-factor authentication on cloud app access |
|
|
Data governance over cloud drives |
Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for regulatorily and business-sensitive data |
|
|
Audit and activity logs |
Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing |
|
|
Email Security & Privacy
|
Generic and spear phishing |
Detects and remediates social engineering attacks based on email content analysis |
|
Identity spoofing |
Detects and remediates social engineering attacks based on adaptive identity monitoring |
|
|
Malware and ransomware injection |
Detects and remediates malware and ransomware in email attachments |
|
|
Embedded links to malicious URLs |
Detects and remediates embedded links to malicious servers |
|
|
DLP over outgoing/incoming email |
Encrypts emails before they are sent, which are then decrypted by their recipients at the other end. |
|
|
Business email compromise (BEC) |
Scans business email, detects and protects against social engineering attacks |
|
|
Email account takeover |
Protects against email attacks from within the organization |
|
|
Audit and activity logs |
Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing |
|
|
Endpoint Security & Privacy
|
Antivirus (AV) |
Detects and remediates files with high-risk content based on their signatures |
|
ATP (NGAV) |
Detects and remediates processes exhibiting high-risk behaviors with behavioral analysis |
|
|
Data recovery |
Stores local snapshots of data |
|
|
DLP on endpoint devices |
Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for business-sensitive data and data defined as sensitive by regulations |
|
|
Audit and activity logs |
Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing |
|
|
Data Governance
|
Data distribution governance and role management |
Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for data defined as sensitive by regulations |
|
PII monitoring |
Monitor for personally identifiable information, or PII, is information that can be used to identify, contact, or distinguish one unique person from another |
|
|
Audit and activity logs |
Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing |