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Paul Maynard

Paul Maynard is special counsel in the technology regulatory group in the London office. He focuses on advising clients on all aspects of UK and European privacy and cybersecurity law relating to complex and innovative technologies such as adtech, cloud computing and online platforms. He also advises clients on how to respond to law enforcement demands, particularly where such demands are made across borders.

Paul advises emerging and established companies in various sectors, including online retail, software and education technology. His practice covers advice on new legislative proposals, for example on e-privacy and cross-border law enforcement access to data; advice on existing but rapidly-changing rules, such the GDPR and cross-border data transfer rules; and on regulatory investigations in cases of alleged non-compliance, including in relation to online advertising and cybersecurity.

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The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) recently announced a new online tracking strategy, which aims to ensure a “fair and transparent online world where people are given meaningful control over how they are tracked online.”

Online advertising is one of the ICO’s current areas of strategic focus (others areas of focus include AI and children’s privacy). The ICO has identified four key areas of concern—all of which the ICO states mean that individuals do not have sufficient control over their personal data:

  • “deceptive or absent choice” regarding non-essential cookies and tracking technologies;
  • “uninformed choice,” which refers to organizations not providing appropriate information to individuals;
  • “undermined choice,” where individuals’ choices are not respected and they are surprised about how their data is used; and
  •  “irrevocable choice,” meaning that individuals cannot effectively change their minds after they have made a choice over how their personal data is processed.

Having identified these areas of concern, the ICO states that it will take the following actions in 2025:Continue Reading ICO announces its online tracking strategy for 2025

In the final quarter of 2024, there have been significant developments in the EU cybersecurity legal landscape. Most prominently, the EU institutions adopted the Cyber Resilience Act and mid-October marked the deadline for Member States to transpose the NIS2 Directive into national law. Most Member States failed to meet the NIS2 transposition deadline, which resulted in the European Commission sending a formal notice to 23 Member States, urging them to transpose the Directive. These 23 Member States have been given two months to respond. (For more information on the Cyber Resilience Act and NIS2 Directive, see our blog posts here and here.)Continue Reading Three Recent Developments in the EU Cyber Landscape

On 2 December 2024, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) adopted its draft guidelines on Article 48 GDPR (the “Draft Guidelines”). The Draft Guidelines are intended to provide guidance on the GDPR requirements applicable to private companies in the EU that receive requests or binding demands for personal data from public authorities (e.g., law enforcement or national security agencies, as well as other regulators) located outside the EU.Continue Reading EDPB adopts draft guidelines on requirements when responding to requests from non-EU public authorities

The UK Government has announced that it intends to introduce the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill (the “Bill”) to Parliament in 2025. Formally proposed as part of the King’s Speech in July, this Bill is intended to strengthen the UK’s cross-sectoral cyber security legislation to better protect the UK’s economy and infrastructure. This Bill will update the existing NIS Regulations, which derive from EU law. Part of the UK Government’s motivation seems to be to keep pace with updates to EU law in this area, specifically relating to the NIS2 Directive that starts to apply this month (see our blog post on this, here).Continue Reading What to expect from the UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill (and when)

Last month, the European Commission published a draft Implementing Regulation (“IR”) under the EU’s revised Network and Information Systems Directive (“NIS2”). The draft IR applies to entities in the digital infrastructure sector, ICT service management and digital service providers (e.g., cloud computing providers, online marketplaces, and online social networks). It sets out further detail on (i) the specific cybersecurity risk-management measures those entities must implement; and (ii) when an incident affecting those entities is considered to be “significant”. Once finalized, it will apply from October 18, 2024.

Many companies may be taken aback by the granular nature of some of the technical measures listed and the criteria to determine if an incident is significant and reportable – especially coming so close to the October deadline for Member States to start applying their national transpositions of NIS2.

The IR is open for feedback via the Commission’s Have Your Say portal until July 25.Continue Reading NIS2: Commission Publishes Long-Awaited Draft Implementing Regulation On Technical And Methodological Requirements And Significant Incidents

On April 25, 2024, the UK’s Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act 2024 (“IP(A)A”) received royal assent and became law.  This law makes the first substantive amendments to the existing Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (“IPA”) since it came into effect, and follows an independent review of the effectiveness of the IPA published in June 2023.Continue Reading Changes to the UK investigatory powers regime receive royal assent

In six months’ time, on 17 October 2024, Member State laws that transpose the EU’s revised Network and Information Systems Directive (“NIS2”) will start to apply.  As described in more detail in our earlier blog post (here), NIS2 significantly expands the categories of organizations that fall within scope of EU cybersecurity legislation. This new, cross-sector law imposes additional and more granular security and incident reporting rules, enhanced governance requirements that apply to organizations’ “management bodies,” and creates a stricter enforcement regime.Continue Reading NIS2 implementation enters the final stretch – six months to deadline

Yesterday, the European Parliament approved the Cyber Resilience Act (“CRA”), which sets out cybersecurity requirements for “products with digital elements” (“PDEs”) placed on the EU market.  The term PDE is defined broadly to include both hardware and software products, such as antivirus software, VPNs, smart home devices, connected toys, and wearables.  The approved text is available here.Continue Reading The Cyber Resilience Act is One Step Closer to Becoming Law

On 6 March 2024, the ICO issued a call for views on so-called “Consent or pay” models, where a user of a service has the option to consent to processing of their data for one or more purposes (typically targeted advertising), or pay a (higher) fee to access the service without their data being processed for those purposes. This is sometimes referred to as “pay or okay”.

The ICO has provided an “initial view” of these models, stating that UK data protection law does not outright prohibit them. It also sets out factors to consider when implementing these models and welcomes the views of publishers, advertisers, intermediaries, civil society, academia and other interested stakeholders. The consultation is open until 17 April 2024.Continue Reading UK ICO Launches a Consultation on “Consent or Pay” Business Models