Author: Ethyca Team

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re familiar with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the data privacy law that California enacted last year. You might not know whether the law should concern your business, and why. There are really three key questions for any business to answer regarding the CCPA:

1. Are we impacted?
2. Why should we care about the impacts?
3. What are the steps we should take to address the impacts?

We’ve prepped a short quiz that generates answers to these crucial questions and more. Give it a shot! Otherwise, skip down for more context on the CCPA and why it might matter for you…

Ethyca’s California Privacy Quiz

Okay, We May Be Impacted By CCPA. Why Should We Care?

Once you’ve figured out whether your business is impacted by the CCPA, the next logical question to ask is: “Why should we care?”

Although the likelihood of getting put out of business from a CCPA fine isn’t “red-alert high” in the short term, there are plenty of reasons to take the CCPA very, very seriously.

Here are four:

• There are many privacy laws in the works nationwide and worldwide
• Advertising performance will suffer without basic privacy systems in place
• Privacy laws create serious pain points for teams without solid processes
• Users have never cared more about privacy and how their data is processed

There are many privacy laws in the works nationwide and worldwide

The possibility of fines under the CCPA are not the end-all-be-all of compliance, but they are substantial. The California government can prosecute non-compliant businesses with up to $7,500 per violation. In the event of a data breach, fines can reach $750 per affected individual. If just 1,400 individuals are affected, the total fine would exceed $1 million.

Those numbers are nothing to sniff at, but the truth is that the CCPA is just one of many privacy laws coming into effect all over the world. Indeed, next year in 2022, California will be welcoming a much stricter privacy law, the CPRA. Soon the cumulative financial risk to getting privacy wrong will be too big to ignore. Here’s a list of US states that have passed or drafted privacy legislation over the last 3 years.

• • 1. California
    2. New York
    3. Maine
    4. Nevada
    5. Minnesota
    6. Oklahoma
    7. Virginia
    8. Washington

This is not to mention a federal US privacy law, which observers believe is a real possibility under the Biden administration. Building nimble data privacy ops is an investment in future-proofing your business for compliance. Each law comes with its own nuances, and there is no one-size-fits-all. However, Ethyca’s automated data mapping empowers your company to clearly understand the data in its systems, including third-party applications. Such systems-level knowledge is crucial as privacy laws spring up all around the globe.

Advertising performance will suffer without basic privacy systems in place

Without a dedicated CCPA compliance operation, advertising hubs like Google and Facebook automatically impose restrictive constraints on your company’s advertising abilities. When Facebook imposed these restrictions at the start of July 2020, Facebook advertisers saw an 84% drop in California conversions within the first week. According to the Network Advertising initiative, defaulting to these restrictions will likely inhibit advertisers’ ability to monetize their inventories in the long run. Google and Facebook ranked first and third in US web traffic in December 2020, and California has the highest total GDP and population of any state. With these metrics in mind, advertisers cannot overlook the value of investing in a nimble CCPA function.

With Ethyca CHOICE, building privacy into your company’s infrastructure provides the best of both worlds. Your company regains control of advertising performance while you empower your users to manage their consent to data-sharing.

Privacy laws create all kinds of pain points for teams without solid processes

Manual efforts to comply with the CCPA are costly, on multiple levels. The single act of inventorying all data in your business systems can take months, if not years. On top of the massive time your team would need to dedicate to this regulatory catch-up, there is the possibility of human error in the process. Even an unintentional CCPA violation can cost your business thousands.

Instead of needing a decentralized and prolonged manual procedure to process a single Data Subject Request, Ethyca simplifies the task. With each user’s data inventoried across all business systems, you can count on prompt turnaround of users’ requests, without mounds of paperwork or a complicated team project. In doing so, your users can count on your business as one that respects their data rights.

Users have never cared more about privacy and how their data is processed

Complying with the CCPA shows consumers that you take data protection seriously and are worthy of their trust. Consumer trust is more vital than ever. Recent research found 89% of consumers express concerns about their data protection. And when it comes to purchasing habits, 75% prioritize brand trust over price when deciding between products.

Trust is hard to gain and dangerous to lose, with 43% of consumers citing loss of trust as a reason they stopped doing business with a company. Circling back to compliance, a CCPA violation costs more than the hefty fine – it damages a reputation. In 2021, no business can afford to ignore the CCPA. While the CCPA can be intimidating, you don’t have to go it alone. Let us show you how to bring CCPA compliance into your business.