
Market report: data protection
In a rapidly changing landscape for data protection and cyber security, leading external counsel advise the best in-house teams on the preparation and practise needed to survive.
One of the greatest challenges that in-house legal teams confront from a data protection and cyber security perspective is staying up to date with trends and threats that seem to develop at an almost exponential rate. DLA Piper’s data protection and cyber security specialist Ross McKean explains: ‘Life was relatively simple in the early days of GDPR… since then there has been a rapid proliferation of laws, case law and guidance… so a key challenge for in-house lawyers is simply keeping up with all the new laws and legal developments.’
This is reiterated by BCL’s data protection expert Julian Hayes, ‘the sands are shifting all the time, they never stay still’, with in-house lawyers needing to ensure that the latest legal and technical developments are constantly monitored and prepared for. This will undoubtedly necessitate a greater level of internal synergy, with the collaboration between legal, IT and PR teams, as well as the remainder of the organisation, ensuring that staff are practically aware of how to respond in a worst-case scenario.