First came GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). More recently came CCPA (California Consumers Protection Act). According to experts, twelve more states are currently considering privacy laws of their own. Given the current political environment, there is little hope for a single federal privacy law. Short summary: it’s a big mess that is going to get even messier.

 For data producers, it remains unclear what the impact of these laws might be. After all, most of us are B2B companies, and most of us hold relatively little information on individuals. Does that mean as an industry we are safe? It’s hard to say, as most of the emerging privacy regulations are oriented to consumer companies collecting individual data incidental to their primary business activity. To date, no privacy legislation has specifically addressed B2B companies that collect data as their primary business, so it’s unclear if we’ve slipped past the regulators entirely or whether we may end up as unintended roadkill.

 An interesting set of short videos from law firm Baker McKenzie is well worth watching, if only to illustrate how far-reaching and potentially disruptive this new wave of legislation is likely to be.

 It starts with employee data – are you prepared to show an employee, on request, all the information you maintain on that person? It moves into marketing, where the contents of your CRM system are likely to be open to inspection by any individual requesting it – are you ready to share call notes and other third-party data you’ve collected? It probably reaches into your datasets as well: the more information you collect on individuals, even if public source, the more you need to prepare. You will likely also need to start re-thinking about the terms under which you license data. In this new world, lawyers are suggesting that B2B companies not hold onto data any longer than needed, not a great piece of news in an industry where building deep historical data remains a big opportunity area. In short, in some way and form, every data publisher is likely to be impacted by the emerging data privacy legislation. Worst of all, many states are giving teeth to their privacy laws by allowing private lawsuits. Yes, anyone with a privacy beef will be able to haul you into court and seek damages

We are moving into a brave new world in this area, and it’s going to be disruptive and painful. Like it or not, you’ve got to stay on top of developments here, because preparedness is the best form of protection.