Utah is the 2nd State to Create a Safe Harbor for Companies Facing Data Breach Litigation

Joseph J. Lazzarotti, Jason C. Gavejian, and Maya Atrakchi of JacksonLewis write: In mid-March, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed into law the Cybersecurity Affirmative Defense Act (HB80) (“the Act”), an amendment to Utah’s data breach notification law, creating several affirmative defenses for persons (defined below) facing a cause of action arising out of a breach of system security, and establishing the requirements for asserting such a defense. In short, the Act seeks to incentivize individuals, associations, corporations, and other entities (“persons”) to maintain reasonable safeguards to protect personal information by providing an affirmative defense in litigation flowing from a data breach. More specifically, a person that creates, maintains, and reasonably complies with a written cybersecurity program that is in place at the time of the breach will be able to take advantage of an affirmative defense to certain claims under the Act: Read more on Workplace Privacy, Data Management & Security Report  DataBreaches.netRead More