US data privacy law talks reveal key differences and similarities between US and EU data security interests

2019 started off with a lot of movement in the United States data protection sphere. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (AB-375) (CCPA) completed its period for public comments in March, and both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate held several meetings regarding a potential federal data privacy law and the role of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The CCPA and the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) set off a ripple effect that has spread across the globe — new data protection regulations of various stripes have appeared in India, China, Japan, Brazil and South Africa — but it is in the U.S. that the ripple effect may have the greatest impact. The world’s economy flows through the U.S., and any federal data privacy regulation will have an enormous impact on how organizations around the world manage their data. As the hottest commodity of the 21st century, the implications of data protection regulations that are similar to GDPR, or modeled on the slightly less stringent CCPA, are extraordinary. For the big tech giants like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook, Inc., that have enjoyed incredibly lax enforcement of data privacy in the U.S., the future promises to be very different.

Supply chain managers and compliance and ethics professionals will have their hands full ensuring the technologists on the team are keeping ahead of the regulations wave. Data is in general considered to be an information technology department concern, but as data becomes currency, commodity and liability all at once, multiple teams and departments are being forced to cooperate and face the challenges ahead.

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