Privacy Pros Say Uptick in Privacy Requests as a Result of COVID-19

According to one survey, 92% of companies are concerned about the new rights that consumers have under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), with just over half saying that this is the hardest part of complying.

Of course, no one is thinking about what happens after a breach, but prior to a breach, this is probably the correct thinking.

56% of the privacy pros expect an increase in rights requests as a result of COVID-19.

The evidence of this is that 51% of the companies are receiving more than 10 requests a week and 20% are receiving more than 100 requests a week.

The survey happened during the first two weeks of April.

59% of the folks are buying new tools. At 10 requests a week, you can process them by hand, but at some point, doing it by hand is going to overwhelm the team. If you have to add just one person to the team, that likely represents $50k a year including overhead, maybe more, forever. Tools become attractive if you have to add 2, 3 or more people.

A curious statistics is that 55% of the legal pros say their solution is automated, but only 13% of the IT folks say it is automated. My guess is that the 13% number is much closer to reality.

The California legislature added a 1 year moratorium on granting employees rights under CCPA and that ends on December 31. 92% of the pros said that they plan to extend privacy rights to employees (probably from a PR standpoint, it is a problem if they do not) and 62% said they plan to offer it to employees outside of California as well.

15% said they plan to wait until they are forced to offer it by the law. A forward thinking group.

Of course, California is only one state. 74% say that they are watching what other states are doing. This is one place where COVID-19 will likely help – there will probably be far fewer states implementing new privacy laws this year. 64% say the fact that other states may implement similar laws is the reason they are looking at automation. If it is 10 requests a week now, does it become 50 or 100 in a year or two.

Bottom line is that no one knows what will happen in the future, but COVID-19 has, apparently, not stopped some people from being concerned about their privacy. Credit: HelpNet Security

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