Canadian legislation is going into effect which will require companies to notify their customers in the event of a data breach, according to the CBC. Called PIPEDA (The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), this act – introduced earlier this year — makes notifying the office of the Privacy Commission of Canada mandatory whenever a security breach poses a “a real risk of significant harm to an individual.” The act also requires companies keep accurate data for two years on their cybersecurity activities and processes, to assist in investigations of potential future breaches, and calls for significant fines in the event of non-compliance.
In the United States, a draft bill on data privacy has been introduced by Senator Ron Wyden, under the name of the Consumer Data Protection Act, reports CNET. This bill proposes to apply to companies with more than $50 million in revenue and personal information on more than one million people, would increase the power of the FTC to act on privacy violations, and would also force companies to produce an annual report on data protection, with criminal penalties for company executives if they lie. “Today’s economy is a giant vacuum for your personal information. Everything you read, everywhere you go, everything you buy and everyone you talk to is sucked up in a corporation’s database,” said Senator Wyden in a statement. “But individual Americans know far too little about how their data is collected, how it’s used and how it’s shared.”
Sources:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/pipeda-privacy-data-1.4886061
