Photo of Jena M. Valdetero

Jena M. Valdetero serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s U.S. Data, Privacy and Cybersecurity Practice where she advises clients on complex data privacy and security issues. She has led more than 1,000 data breach investigations. A litigator by background, Jena defends companies against privacy and data breach litigation, with an emphasis on class action lawsuits. She has designed and conducted dozens of data breach tabletop exercises to empower clients to respond effectively to a data security incident. She also counsels companies on data privacy and security compliance programs and advises on privacy and cyber risks associated with mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, and securities. Jena also advises a diverse array of clients on compliance with existing and emerging privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). She is a certified privacy professional through the International Association of Privacy Professionals (CIPP/US), for which she is a former KnowledgeNet Co-Chair.

  1. Cybersecurity Rules by the SEC and the EU – Both the Security and Exchange Commission’s public company cybersecurity disclosure and breach notification rules as well as the implementation of the EU NIS 2 Directive will drive increased focus from management and the board on cybersecurity risks, preventive measures, and incident response. Expect to see another

As detailed in our July 2023 GT Alert, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now requires public companies to file a Form 8-K and disclose a material cybersecurity incident within four days of determining the incident’s materiality. Form 8-K Item 1.05(c) includes an exception to the four-day requirement: where disclosure poses a substantial risk

On Oct. 27, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) amended its Standards for Safeguarding Customer Information (the Safeguards Rule), promulgated under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), to require financial institutions to provide notice to the FTC of data breaches that impact 500 or more consumers (the Amendment). This comes after the FTC’s major update to the

In a Halloween-eve move sure to send shivers down the spines of every public company’s CISO, on Oct. 30, the SEC filed a securities fraud complaint targeting SolarWinds’ CISO in the wake of their major December 2020 data security incident. The SEC alleges SolarWinds and its CISO committed securities fraud in connection with multiple public

On July 26, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted the long-awaited final rule requiring that public companies disclose information about cybersecurity incidents within four business days of determining the incident is material. GT wrote about the proposed rule shortly after it was released in March 2022. For context, Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw noted, in

  1. An Increase in Extortion-Only Cyber Attacks – While ransomware attacks have been on the rise since 2020, a recent trend has emerged where threat actors are bypassing ransomware malware and encryption tactics and going straight to data theft. If a victim company does not pay the extortion demand, the threat actors engage in increasingly aggressive

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as well as state procedural rules, permit parties to a lawsuit to conduct discovery, in search of information and documents that may be relevant to the litigation. Parties can issue requests for documents, information (called interrogatories), and admissions of fact to other parties to the lawsuit; parties may use

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as well as state procedural rules, permit parties to a lawsuit to conduct discovery, in search of information and documents that may be relevant to the litigation. Parties can issue requests for documents, information (called interrogatories), and admissions of fact to other parties to the lawsuit; parties may use

After Europe blazed the trail by passing the sweeping General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) in 2016, California followed closely in the footsteps of European efforts by passing the most comprehensive data privacy law in the United States, the California Consumer Privacy Act (the “CCPA”). Effective January 1, 2020, the CCPA provided a number of obligations

On Aug. 8, 2022, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed economic sanctions on Tornado Cash, a popular cryptocurrency mixing service that allows customers to obscure the original source of virtual currency transactions by “mixing” multiple transactions and then redistributing them. While mixing may have legitimate benefits in some transactions,