As reported last week, the EU struck down the EU-US privacy shield, saying the framework does not adequately protect European users from the US government. The Computer and communications industry association indicates of the 5,384 companies relying on law, 70% of those certified are small to medium sized businesses.
That’s the new data point to focus on – the number of small businesses impacted. This isn’t just the big tech companies dealing with this… and in fact, they are likely going to be best positioned anyway with global data centers. It’s the small companies to worry about.
There is opportunity here – helping customer manage their data is a high value transaction. Even without guidance on what the law will be, starting the process of inventory to understand what exposure a customer has is needed.
There’s also clearly going to need to be some reckoning coming in terms of regulation. It’s not viable to simply ignore Europe, and the Europeans have made it clear… the current US law structure will simply not do.
Source: Protocol