Compliance Services
February 23, 2023
5 minutes
CCPA stands for California Consumer Privacy Act and is a digital protection law that helps consumers protect their personal information online.
The CCPA is part of a larger trend toward data protection as consumers give companies more and more information to store, much of which is confidential, identifiable, and sensitive. These laws have come shortly after some well-known data breaches which resulted in large businesses and organizations selling collected data without the knowledge of the consumers.
Passed in 2018, the CCPA became the most comprehensive privacy law in the US in order to give consumers more control over how their data is stored and to help them protect their data from being bought and sold without consent.
Learn more about the importance of security compliance and how you can start implementing the necessary cybersecurity controls in this blog: Why is Security Compliance Important?
The entirety of the CCPA regulation was designed to protect consumers' data privacy rights. It does this by giving consumers three major rights concerning their data:
Additionally, CCPA protects consumers by making it illegal to discriminate against them if they choose to exercise any of the three rights listed above. This means businesses cannot change their business offerings, charge more, or not do business with someone who wants to control their personal data.
What qualifies as personal information is defined within the CCPA as information that “identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.”
In layman’s terms, data privacy means almost any statistics, data, actions, or pieces of knowledge that can be linked to you.
Related Blog: Tips for Complying with Data Privacy Laws
The CCPA also gives Californians a limited ability to sue businesses when their personal information has been compromised, via a data breach, for example. It also gives the Attorney General power to sue on behalf of the residents and levy substantial financial penalties.
At an individual level, the CCPA impacts residents of California. For businesses, every entity that operates and has consumers who are residents of California must abide by the law, regardless of which state they are based in.
In addition to that, for the CCPA to apply, a business must meet any one of these three criteria:
If a business meets one of these qualifiers, it must meet the requirements of the CCPA when doing business with Californians
The good news for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is that the above qualifications are designed to protect you. Because if you do not meet one of those qualifications, you are not required to be compliant with the privacy requirements of the CCPA. Essentially, your business with Californians can remain the same.
Similarly, the CCPA does not apply to you if you don’t do any business in California. But be wary that if you do meet one of the qualifications, having just one Californian customer means you must comply with the rules set by the CCPA.
If you’re confused, you are not alone. Be sure to consult with experts in the field of compliance services to ensure you’re compliant if you must be. If not, you could face hefty fines.
For companies who are required to become compliant with the rules set by the CCPA, you may be asking yourself ‘what is CCPA compliance?’ It’s important that every business knows exactly what is required of you. Here is a quick rundown of what CCPA compliance means for SMBs:
The CCPA isn’t the only privacy-focused law passed in California. In 2003, the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA) was passed and was the first state law in the United States to require that commercial websites which collect personal information post a California-specific privacy policy that must include certain content as explained in the bill itself.
The CCPA, coming in over a decade later, took it even further by giving consumers the right to delete previously collected data and to opt out of future data collection from online companies that conduct business online.
Another example of privacy laws is the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) created in the European Union in 2018.
The GDPR gives European Union citizens a significant amount of control over their private data on the internet. Specifically, it changed the way that websites can acquire consumer consent in order to obtain data. The regulations outline the guidelines for how a website must communicate how personal data will be used and institutes requirements for proof of user consent.
Though the CCPA, CalOPPA, and GDPR are all different in their definitions and protections of user data, they do have one major thing in common: they affect how people around the world do business with people living in these regions.
Businesses collect a lot of valuable information these days, but they need to make sure they’re complying with all major regulations, like CCPA, to protect this data.
Protect your business and your customers and avoid the risks of non-compliance by having the cybersecurity controls necessary for security. Learn more about the importance of security compliance and how to get started in our blog, Why is Security Compliance Important?