New York Enacts Stricter Data Cybersecurity Laws
The flurry of state legislative activity in the wake of the enactment of the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) continues with the New York legislature recently passing two bills to increase accountability for the processing of personal information. On July 25, 2019, Governor Cuomo signed the two bills into law, one which amended the state’s data breach notification law, and another that created additional obligations for data breaches at credit reporting agencies. Together, the new laws require the implementation of reasonable data security safeguards, expand breach reporting obligations for certain types of information, and require that a “consumer credit reporting agency” that suffers a data breach provide five years of identity theft prevention services for impacted residents. Meanwhile, the more comprehensive New York Privacy Act, which many viewed as even more expansive than the CCPA, failed to gather the necessary support in the most recent legislative session.
FTC Seeks Comment on Proposed Changes to its GLBA Safeguards and Privacy Rules
Over the last few years, States have enacted increasingly aggressive legislation concerning data privacy and security, raising concerns that companies will be subject to a patchwork of different standards. Congress has recently taken notice, convening hearings on potential federal privacy legislation, with the possibility of preemption a hot topic during the hearings. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) got into the act as well, releasing two notices of proposed rulemaking (“NPRM”) on potential changes to its the Standards for Safeguarding Customer Information (“Safeguards Rule”) and Privacy of Consumer Financial Information Rule (“Privacy Rule”) under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The proposed amendments – and particularly the proposed changes to the Safeguard Rule – signal the FTC’s desire to align its rules with those of key states and to further protect customer information held by financial institutions.