Imagine you have completed your HIPAA risk assessment and implemented a robust privacy and security plan designed to meet each criteria of the Omnibus Rule. You think that, should you suffer a data breach involving protected health information as defined under HIPAA (PHI), you can show the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its Office of Civil Rights (OCR), as well as media reporters and others, that you exercised due diligence and should not be penalized. Your expenditure of time and money will help ensure your compliance with federal law.

Unfortunately, however, HHS is not the only sheriff in town when it comes to data breach enforcement. In a formal administrative action, as well as two separate federal court actions, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been battling LabMD for the past few years in a case that gets more interesting as the filings and rulings mount (In the Matter of LabMD, Inc., Docket No. 9357 before the FTC). LabMD’s CEO Michael Daugherty recently published a book on the dispute with a title analogizing the FTC to the devil, with the byline, “The Shocking Expose of the U.S. Government’s Surveillance and Overreach into Cybersecurity, Medicine, and Small Business.” Daugherty issued a press release in late January attributing the shutdown of operations of LabMD primarily to the FTC’s actions.

Among many other reasons, this case is interesting because of the dual jurisdiction of the FTC and HHS/OCR over breaches that involve individual health information.

On one hand, the HIPAA regulations detail a specific, fact-oriented process for determining whether an impermissible disclosure of PHI constitutes a breach under the law. The pre-Omnibus Rule breach analysis involved consideration of whether the impermissible disclosure posed a “significant risk of financial, reputational, or other harm” to the individual whose PHI was disclosed. The post-Omnibus Rule breach analysis presumes that an impermissible disclosure is a breach, unless a risk assessment that includes consideration of at least four specific factors demonstrates there was a “low probability” that the individual’s PHI was compromised.

In stark contrast to HIPAA, the FTC files enforcement actions based upon its decision that an entity’s data security practices are “unfair”, but it has not promulgated regulations or issued specific guidance as to how or when a determination of “unfairness” is made. Instead, the FTC routinely alleges that entities’ data security practices are “unfair” because they are not “reasonable” – two vague words that leave entities guessing about how to become FTC compliant.

In 2013, in an administrative action, LabMD challenged the FTC’s authority to institute these type of enforcement actions. LabMD argued, in part, that the FTC does not have the authoritiy to bring actions under the “unfairness” prong of Section 5 of the FTC Act. LabMD further argued that there should only be one sheriff in town – not both HHS and the FTC. Not surprisingly, in January 2014, the FTC denied the motion to dismiss, finding that HIPAA requirements are “largely consistent with the data security duties” of the FTC under the FTC Act.The opinion speaks of “data security duties” and “requirements” of the FTC Act, but these “duties” and “requirements” are not spelled out (much less even mentioned) in the FTC Act. As a result, how can anyone arrive at the determination that the standards are consistent? Instead, entities that suffer a data security incident must comply with the detailed analysis under HIPAA, as well as the absence of any clear guidance under the FTC Act.

In a March10, 2014 ruling, the administrative law judge ruled that he would permit LabMD to depose an FTC designee regarding consumers harmed by LabMD’s allegedly inadequate security practices. However, the judge also ruled that LabMD could not “inquire into why, or how, the factual bases of the allegations … justify the conclusion that [LabMD] violated the FTC Act.” So while the LabMD case may eventually provide some guidance as to the factual circumstances involved in an FTC determination that data security practices are “unfair” and have caused, or are likely to cause, consumer harm, the legal reasoning behind the FTC’s determinations is likely to remain a mystery.

In addition to the challenges mounted by LabMD, Wyndham Worldwide Corp., has also spent the past year contesting the FTC’s authority to pursue enforcement actions based upon companies’ alleged “unfair” or “unreasonable” data security practices. On Monday, April 7, 2014, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey sided with the FTC and denied Wyndham’s motion to dismiss the FTC’s complaint. The Court found that Section 5 of the FTC Act permits the FTC to regulate data security, and that the FTC is not required to issue formal rules about what companies must do to implement “reasonable” data security practices.

These recent victories may cause the “other sheriff” – the FTC – to ramp up its efforts to regulate data security practices. Unfortunately, because it does not appear that the FTC will issue any guidance in the near future about what companies can do to ensure that their data security practices are reasonable, these companies must monitor closely the FTC’s actions, adjudications or other signals in an attempt to predict what the FTC views as data security best practices.