Data Privacy: How to Keep Current with Data Security Laws and Regulations

How do you handle the privacy and data security issues for your firm and your clients?

How do you stay abreast of the myriad rules and regulations governing data security and cybersecurity problems?

Are cybersecurity attackers and data breach specialists winning the cybersecurity war?

According to IBM's sponsored 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study by Ponemon Institute, "the global average cost of a data breach is up 6.4 percent over the previous year to $3.86 million. The average cost for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information also increased by 4.8 percent year over year to $148."

Are all industries and businesses affected?

Privacy and data security issues arise on a daily basis and influence most businesses, from human resources and health records management to compliance, insurance and legal departments. Attorneys and law firms need to be fully equipped to handle both proactive and reactive problems occurring within the privacy and data security spectrum.

Attorneys are required to track, understand and comply with numerous and varied privacy and data security laws and regulations, not only throughout the United States, but internationally.

• The European Union recently implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
• The federal government amended the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Currently, all 50 states have data breach notification laws. However, the laws and notification requirements thereunder vary from state to state.

Added to that are the increase in cybercrimes like ransomware, and data breach class action cases like Yahoo!® and Verizon®. Attorneys must be even more diligent than ever to protect the privacy of personal information for their firms, their clients and even third parties.

Unmatched legal content + comparative state law tools

So what happens when an industry-leading provider of trusted legal, business and news content like LexisNexis® starts to overlay and enhance its rich and varied content with cutting-edge tools that enable attorneys to sift, sort, analyze and compare data security and privacy information in powerful, productive new ways?

This suite of new and enhanced products offered by the Lexis Advance® service and Lexis Practice Advisor® contains topic-specific offerings such as Data Security & Privacy and Intellectual Property. With Lexis Practice Advisor, you can better inform and expedite the work attorneys do every day.

Lexis Practice Advisor Data Security & Privacy offers the Lexis Practice Advisor® State Law Comparison Tool, helping you compare laws across multiple states in a customized Microsoft® Excel® chart or a Microsoft Word or PDF report. With the Lexis Practice Advisor State Law Comparison Tool, you can analyze how the states data breach notification statutes:

• Define personal information or breach of security
• Outline who must receive notification of a data breach and whether one can delay such notice
• Determine what information must be included in a data breach notification
• Ascertain whether encrypted data is exempt from the notification requirements
• Establish whether covered entities are required to provide identity theft services after a breach
• Summarize the penalties for violating the data breach notification statutes

Lawyers and legal departments are entering a time in which data security and privacy issues are at the forefront of most industries. The competitive advantages in having extensive and enhanced knowledge and insight of the countless issues and laws enacted to address such issues inevitably is a must-have in the legal world.