Privacy as a Lingua Franca?

Two years from now, roughly 75% of the world’s population will be protected by at least one data privacy or data protection law (Gartner). With more than 130 data protection regulations already in place and more emerging all the time, achieving and maintaining privacy compliance has become one of the most challenging imperatives in global business today. Few issues in modern society have achieved such widespread attention and global turbulence and the rate of change doesn’t show any signs of slowing.

In many ways, the evolution of data privacy laws is driving a common language, a shared approach recognised and welcomed by regulatory bodies, governments and citizens in nearly every country. Indeed, jurisdictions with federal data privacy and protection laws in place now outnumber those that do not. However the privacy landscape is not static and for all the alignment between jurisdictions, a significant measure of inconsistency remains.

Across continents, there are several countries in the preparation or implementation phases of their own iterations of federal privacy laws, including Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and numerous jurisdictions in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Notably, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), a landmark U.S. federal privacy bill, is advancing through the legislature. Its adoption would bring the first federal privacy law in the U.S. Adding to the assortment of federal laws is a labyrinth of sector-specific or regional privacy laws...