The California Consumer Privacy Act (or CCPA) went into effect on January 1, and enforcement will begin in July. Given the law’s complexities, significant substantive changes to the law adopted late in 2019, the unsettled nature of the California Attorney General’s CCPA regulations, and the numerous differences between the CCPA and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR), companies doing business in California may be at risk for failure to comply without even realizing it. Others may simply not have the bandwidth to comply. Either way, the CCPA can significantly impact how you conduct business. The CCPA is also a harbinger of things to come. In the continued absence of a federal standard, states will continue to pass their own new or amended privacy laws. The already fragmented legal landscape risks further fracturing and continued fluidity, forcing small to mid-size companies to invest potentially significant resources to keep up with their compliance needs.

Colin Zick and Chris Hart, who co-chair Foley Hoag’s Privacy and Data Security Practice, led this online discussion about the current and future landscape of CCPA compliance, how states and the federal government are moving the privacy goalposts, and how your organization should be thinking about compliance.