Data Security

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)

In recent months, the European Court of Justice (“CJEU”) issued five judgments providing some clarity on the scope of individuals’ rights to claim compensation for “material and non-material damage” under Article 82 of the GDPR. These rulings will inform companies’ exposure to compensation claims, particularly in the context of the EU’s Collective Redress Directive, but open questions remain about the quantum of compensation courts will offer in these cases and we expect both the CJEU and national courts to deliver additional case-law clarifying this topic in the coming year (for more information on recent CJEU cases related to compensation, see our previous blog posts here and here).

  • In VB v Natsionalna agentsia za prihodite (C-340/21), the CJEU concluded that individuals may have suffered “non-material damage”—and therefore be able to claim compensation—if they can demonstrate that they feared future misuse of personal data that was compromised in a personal data breach.  
  • In VX v Gemeinde Ummendorf (C-456/22), the CJEU found that there is no de minimis threshold for damage, below which individuals cannot claim for compensation.
  • In BL v MediaMarktSaturn (C-687-21), the CJEU restated its existing case-law, and expanded upon its analysis in VB by clarifying that alleged harms cannot be “purely hypothetical”.
  • In Kočner v Europol (C-755/21), the CJEU awarded non-material damages of €2000 for the publication in newspapers of transcripts of “intimate” text messages.
  • In GP v Juris GmbH (C-741/21), the CJEU found that where one processing activity infringes multiple provisions of the GDPR, this should not allow claimants to “double-count” the harm they suffered.

We provide further detail on each case below.Continue Reading Rounding up Five Recent CJEU Cases on GDPR Compensation

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

The recently agreed Cyber Resilience Act isn’t the only new EU cybersecurity rule set to be published this December: by the end of the year, the European Commission is expected to adopt its draft regulations to establish a European cybersecurity certification scheme (“ECCS”). Continue Reading EU cyber regulation wave quietly rolls on – Commission set to finalize new cyber standards

Yesterday, the European Commission, Council and Parliament announced that they had reached an agreement on the text of the Cyber Resilience Act (“CRA”). As a result, the CRA now looks set to finish its journey through the EU legislative process early next year. As we explained in our prior post about the Commission proposal, the CRA will introduce new cybersecurity obligations for a range of digital products sold in Europe. We’ll provide a more detailed summary of the agreed text once it is finalized and published but in this post we set out a brief summary of key provisions. In terms of timing, the CRA will come into force over a phased transition period starting in late 2025.
Continue Reading The EU’s Cyber Resilience Act Has Now Been Agreed

A would-be technical development could have potentially significant consequences for cloud service providers established outside the EU. The proposed EU Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS)—which has been developed by the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA over the past two years and is expected to be adopted by the European Commission as an implementing act in Q1 2024—would, if adopted in its current form, establish certain requirements that could:

  1. exclude non-EU cloud providers from providing certain (“high” level) services to European companies, and
  2. preclude EU cloud customers from accessing the services of these non-EU providers.

Continue Reading Implications of the EU Cybersecurity Scheme for Cloud Services

As many readers will be aware, the EU’s new cybersecurity directive, NIS2, imposes security, incident notification, and governance obligations on entities in a range of critical sectors, including energy, transport, finance, health, and digital infrastructure (for an overview of NIS2, see our previous post here). One of the main reasons the Commission proposed these new rules was the inconsistent ways in which Member States had implemented requirements under the prior directive, NIS. To help improve harmonization further, the Commission has now issued two guidance documents to help assess when NIS2 or sector-specific requirements apply, and to ensure that registration requirements are consistent across the Union.
Continue Reading European Commission Publishes Guidance on NIS2: Interplay with Sector-Specific Laws

Last week, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) released guidance on Security-by-Design and Security-by-Default principles for technology manufacturers that was jointly developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency, as well as cybersecurity authorities in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, and New Zealand.  While similar principles have been published in the past, such as those released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, this guidance builds on the White House’s recent roll-out of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy and is in line with efforts to encourage a consistent, international approach to software security that emphasizes the responsibilities of software manufacturers across various jurisdictions.  While the guidance primarily focuses on recommendations for technology manufacturers, it also includes recommendations for enterprise customers to “hold their supplying technology manufacturers accountable for the security outcomes of their products.”  CISA and the authoring agencies are seeking feedback on the guidance, and indicated plans to hold future listening sessions to collect feedback. Continue Reading CISA Publishes International Guidance on Implementing Security-by-Design and Security-by-Default Principles for Software Manufacturers and Customers

On April 11, 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China (“CAC”) released draft Administrative Measures for Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (《生成式人工智能服务管理办法（征求意见稿）》) (“draft Measures”) (official Chinese version available here) for public consultation.  The deadline for submitting comments is May 10, 2023.

The draft Measures would regulate generative Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) services that are “provided to the public in mainland China.”  These requirements cover a wide range of issues that are frequently debated in relation to the governance of generative AI globally, such as data protection, non-discrimination, bias and the quality of training data.  The draft Measures also highlight issues arising from the use of generative AI that are of particular concern to the Chinese government, such as content moderation, the completion of a security assessment for new technologies, and algorithmic transparency.  The draft Measures thus reflect the Chinese government’s objective to craft its own governance model for new technologies such as generative AI.

Further, and notwithstanding the requirements introduced by the draft Measures (as described in greater detail below), the text states that the government encourages the (indigenous) development of (and international cooperation in relation to) generative AI technology, and encourages companies to adopt “secure and trustworthy software, tools, computing and data resources” to that end. 

Notably, the draft Measures do not make a distinction between generative AI services offered to individual consumers or enterprise customers, although certain requirements appear to be more directed to consumer-facing services than enterprise services.

This blog post identifies a few highlights of the draft Measures.Continue Reading China Proposes Draft Measures to Regulate Generative AI

On March 8, 2023, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), through the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response and the Health Sector Coordinating Counsel Joint Cybersecurity Working Group, released an updated version of its Cybersecurity Framework Implementation Guide (the “Guide”) “to help the public and private health care sectors prevent cybersecurity incidents.”  Specifically, the Guide aims to help healthcare organizations leverage the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to “determine their cybersecurity goals, assess their current cybersecurity practices, or lack thereof, and help identify gaps for remediation.”  Continue Reading HHS Releases Guidance to Help Healthcare Organizations Align with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework