Vicarious Liability For Cyber And Privacy-Related
Claims: Is Your Organization Protected Against Internal
Threats?1
Privacy and data breaches at universities and colleges continue
to rise. In response to a Statistics Canada survey in 2017,
universities reported the second highest number of cybersecurity
incidents.2 This is to be expected, given the volume and
sensitivity of the information in the custody and control of
higher-learning institutions, including personal information of
students, faculty and staff, and research project data. All of this
data in the possession of one institution makes an attractive
target for external hackers, but what happens if the threat is
closer to home? The long-standing doctrine of vicarious liability
provides that an employer can be held liable for certain acts of an
employee.
