Data Privacy post COVID-19: What has changed and where do we go now?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started last year, privacy has been in the spotlight, becoming an even more important priority, both for individuals and companies. European citizens and businesses have had to radically realign their lives to the new reality. While IT teams struggled with the data security and privacy challenge of a sudden migration to remote working, politicians grappled with how and whether to maintain privacy safeguards as data was shared for contact tracing and medical research. Following the introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016 and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the pace of adoption of modernised data protection laws has accelerated across the world. Regardless of their country, customers and companies across the globe demand a consistent high-level of protection. In the years to come, data protection laws will continue to evolve, as will data privacy. The international flow of data will be more than ever at the heart of the discussions.  Data privacy laws provide important safeguards and consumer protections but overlapping compliance and data localisation pressures raise many questions and have led to political tensions. The next phase in Europe’s privacy agenda is taking shape with the release of updated standard contractual clauses (SCCs), a proposed UK adequacy decision and transatlantic talks on the successor to Privacy Shield.