Stephanie O. Sparks
Chair, IP & Data Privacy, Hoge Fenton
Stephanie started her legal career as a judicial law clerk and then business litigator. In 2001, she joined Hoge Fenton in pursuit of hands-on trial experience. She quickly gained expertise in intellectual property, electronic discovery and computer forensics and took a leadership role in those niche practice areas at the firm. In 2006, she was elevated to shareholder and started the firm’s Intellectual Property Group. Given her experience and client demand for data breach crisis management, Stephanie also started the firm's Privacy & Data Security Group. Today, Stephanie enjoys advising clients in commercial and tech transactions, IP protection and enforcement, and serving as the crisis manager for companies victimized by a data breach, whether it be from a stolen laptop to a hacked server to a phishing scam.
Stephanie also conducts onsite data security and compliance assessments; provides privacy and data security awareness training; prepares record management policies, record retention/destruction schedules; information security plans and data breach incident response plans. She negotiates business associate agreements mandated by HIPAA, and other agreements involving privacy and data protection, hosting, migration and transfer.