The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) is well known as the toughest privacy and security law in the world, as it has a wide reach and imposes heavy fines against those who violate its privacy and security standards (which are quite broad). The impact of the GDPR has already been felt in the United States since it went into effect in 2018, and now U.S. lawmakers in numerous states are moving to enact similar legislations. The California Consumer Protection Act (“CCPA”) was the first instance of the GDPR’s impact in the United States, as California put in place a statute and regulations that mirrored the GDPR in several respects. Now Virginia has set in motion what could be a year-long string of states enacting similar legislation. In particular, Washington and New York have proposed legislation following the framework of the CCPA. This article will compare the CCPA to the newly enacted and proposed privacy laws in the United States.
Continue Reading GDPR in the USA? New State Legislation Is Making This Closer to Reality

Business man on laptopLast month, the California Attorney General approved the final set of regulations interpreting the requirements of the California Consumer Privacy Act (Cal. Civ. Code Sections 1798.100 et seq.) (the “CCPA”).

What does it include?

The final CCPA regulations include a number of points of clarification such as what it means to provide “notice at collection,” the methods to provide a consumer with access to a business’s privacy policy and what content is required to be disclosed in that privacy policy, and the methods by which a company must provide consumers with a right to opt out from the sale of their personal information.
Continue Reading What do the final CCPA regulations mean for you?

Audit. A simple enough word, which basically means “to count.” Yet few words can evoke fear as much as this one word. No one asks their love “How do I love thee? Let me audit the ways,” nor do we tell our children to “Audit your blessings.” And while audits are not inherently unreasonable, their use should be reasonable and relevant. And due to the negative connotation of the word, many IT vendors are even couching their audit notices in “kinder” terms, characterizing the reviews as customer-benefitting and the like. But just as Shakespeare noted about misnamed flowers, an audit by any other name doesn’t change anything, and still holds risk.

Software audits are on the rise, and with most users reporting some under-licensing situations (and the requisite payment of additional license and support fees), this upward trend will only continue as more IT providers focus on this “low hanging fruit” revenue source. An increasing number of IT solutions providers are asking (or sometimes just telling) their customers to submit to an audit, albeit many times called by a different name, and taking increasingly aggressive approaches. The IT industry and the industries of its customers are taking notice, as in many cases, what is portrayed as a simple review will end up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of exposure in the form of license and maintenance fees.
Continue Reading Software Audits: A Rose by any Other Name…