This year has already seen over 100 GDPR non-compliance decisions. Mostly limited to regional companies, but a few have made larger news. The latest company poised to be fined is Disqus. Disqus is a commenting platform that companies can embed in their sites or applications to allow visitors to leave comments on individual articles or pages. Norway's data protection authority has notified Disqus that they intend to issue a non-compliance fine of NOK 250,000,000 (about EUR 2,500,000).

Data breaches are big news. They come with a major hit to the trust customers have with a business, and even parts of the world that don't have data privacy laws will often have some form of data breach law. It might be surprising though, for those focused on GDPR, that data breaches don't account for the greatest number, and greatest monetary value, of GDPR fines.

In today’s data-driven world, every other company and application collects a significant amount of important data and individual’s personal information such as name, email ID, address, date of birth, ID number, credit card information, and online behaviours, history and much more. Sharing data has become an essential component to many businesses and organisations; it allows the data controller and data subjects to stay connected and collaborate on many things.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a federal law that applies to all publicly traded businesses in the United States. It imposes sweeping corporate governance standards on those businesses, to improve accountability in the boardroom and senior management ranks and to make corporate financial statements more reliable.

The Biden administration said it’s drafting an executive order to help the United States government better defend itself against digital supply chain attacks.

Following President Biden’s address to Congress last night in which he referenced cybersecurity as a priority twice, news is circulating today that the executive order on cybersecurity is imminent. This news comes as a much awaited and long overdue step towards creating standardization and structure around cybersecurity.

And so it continues. Last month, Virginia passed its own privacy law, the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), adding fuel to the fire over a US federal privacy law, and introducing new complexities for businesses operating in or addressing the US market. It will take effect on January 1, 2023 (the same day as California’s CPRA which amends the current CCPA) and was passed in record-breaking time: less than two months, and by an overwhelming majority.

Working toward GDPR compliance means taking inventory on the data you collect and process. You've mapped your data, have a catalog of impact assessments, but now you need a way to present it in a way that regulators can look over. As far as the general data protection regulation (GDPR) is concerned, every piece of data processing you do needs a record, and those records are stored in a record of processing activities (ROPA). Regulators use a ROPA to get a full picture of your data processing.

Personal information (PI) enables businesses to customize the customer experience and boost sales. However, consumer rights advocacy and privacy regulations, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and state data privacy laws enacted in the United States, limit the collection of PI. Preeminent among these laws is the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA).

Encryption has been a hot topic of discussion during the implementation phase of most data privacy laws. In the age where organizations are dealing with large volumes of data each day, the protection of this sensitive data is critical. The data, which is seen as a business-critical asset for organizations, should be protected against malicious hackers looking for opportunities to steal the data.