It’s been a few years since we have reviewed the Judicial Hellholes report from the American Tort Reform Foundation.  The 2009/2010 report ranks the top three as follows:  #1 South Florida, #2 West Virginia and #3 Cook County, IL.  In the 2008 report, the top three were the same, although South Florida was #2 and West Virginia was #1.  For the full report, visit the American Tort Reform website.

Also, released earlier this year was the 2009 study of data breach costs to U.S. companies by Ponemon Institute.  As reported by Network World, the average per-record cost was $204 in 2009.  This amount is $2 more than what Ponemon reported in the previous year’s study.  Ponemon’s 2005 study cited the average per-record cost at $138.  So, the growth in this cost appears to have slowed.  See our previous entries on data breach costs for more information.

We’ve briefly discussed Cloud Computing before but a recent article from ZDNet UK offers an interesting description of risk management issues.  The author suggests an “outside-in” approach where companies focus security measures on keeping dangerous outsiders from breaking in to their systems needs to be revamped to also consider the “inside-out” point of view. Read the article.