The Guide to State Privacy Laws

Unpacking the similarities and differences of the data privacy laws in the United States.

Why Data Privacy Laws Matter

If you’re a stakeholder in your company’s data privacy program, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when taking stock of the current landscape of data privacy laws and expectations. Between the emergence of new regulations across states and enforcement actions that add clarity to existing laws, data privacy is evolving at a breakneck pace.

When building out your data privacy program, you’ll want to identify the gold standards of data privacy regulations—as well as the common denominators among them—and use them as a metric to evaluate your program. Doing this helps ensure you’re covered as new regulations emerge in states where you currently do business or if you expand into states with data privacy laws on the books.

In our Privacy Trends Report we found the majority of consumers are concerned in some way about how their personal data is handled. And more and more, users are demanding that local and national governing agencies take action to prevent irresponsible or unethical data privacy practices.

Data privacy has emerged as a bipartisan issue, as there’s an even mixture of red and blue states that have data privacy laws. Data privacy legislation introduced at the national level, tends to have bipartisan support and sponsorship, too.

Given that Gartner predicts that 75% of the world’s population will be protected by data privacy laws by 2024, we can assume that the majority of U.S. citizens will be included in that statistic. Ensuring that your business practices and processes that use sensitive data are compliant with these areas of overlap will put you well ahead of the curve on adapting to current and future state-level regulations as they develop.