Tantleff Comments on Prospects for New Data Protection Legislation Next Year

Partner Aaron Tantleff was quoted in a CSO article, “Defining data protection standards could be a hot topic in state legislation in 2021,” about the likelihood that state legislatures will tackle cybersecurity issues in the coming year.

Tantleff said that aside from the pandemic, the nation’s political divide could delay state legislative action on cybersecurity matters. “States are going to ask, ‘What’s the likelihood we’re going to pass legislation and it’s going to get overturned [at the national level],’” he said. “There’s going to be a little more of ‘Let’s wait and see what’s going to happen at the national level.”

Once the immediacy of the pandemic dissipates and the political heat cools, cybersecurity issues likely will surface again at the state legislative level, Tantleff added, probably in combination with related matters, like data privacy. “You really don’t have this plethora of state cybersecurity laws that would be independent of their privacy law brethren,” he said.