Question 55 - CIPM discussion

SCENARIO

Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Richard McAdams recently graduated law school and decided to return to the small town of Lexington, Virginia to help run his aging grandfather's law practice. The elder McAdams desired a limited, lighter role in the practice, with the hope that his grandson would eventually take over when he fully retires. In addition to hiring Richard, Mr. McAdams employs two paralegals, an administrative assistant, and a part-time IT specialist who handles all of their basic networking needs. He plans to hire more employees once Richard gets settled and assesses the office's strategies for growth.

Immediately upon arrival, Richard was amazed at the amount of work that needed to done in order to modernize the office, mostly in regard to the handling of clients' personal data. His first goal is to digitize all the records kept in file cabinets, as many of the documents contain personally identifiable financial and medical data. Also, Richard has noticed the massive amount of copying by the administrative assistant throughout the day, a practice that not only adds daily to the number of files in the file cabinets, but may create security issues unless a formal policy is firmly in place Richard is also concerned with the overuse of the communal copier/ printer located in plain view of clients who frequent the building. Yet another area of concern is the use of the same fax machine by all of the employees. Richard hopes to reduce its use dramatically in order to ensure that personal data receives the utmost security and protection, and eventually move toward a strict Internet faxing policy by the year's end.

Richard expressed his concerns to his grandfather, who agreed, that updating data storage, data security, and an overall approach to increasing the protection of personal data in all facets is necessary Mr. McAdams granted him the freedom and authority to do so. Now Richard is not only beginning a career as an attorney, but also functioning as the privacy officer of the small firm. Richard plans to meet with the IT employee the following day, to get insight into how the office computer system is currently set-up and managed.

Richard needs to closely monitor the vendor in charge of creating the firm's database mainly because of what?