What Transatlantic Employers Need to Know About EU-US Data Transfers

  • Safe Harbor 2.0 will not be so useful because Schrems held that the EU Court of Justice lacks jurisdiction to enforce uniform standards.
  • Yesterday’s European Commission communication to the European Parliament confirms that Schrems is a serious problem for US employers with EU employees.
  • A key part of managing evolving privacy standards is the data governance practice of rigorously maintaining information provenance.  And, model contracts are in trouble but are the best bet today.

More on each below.

Continue reading “What Transatlantic Employers Need to Know About EU-US Data Transfers”

Procuring IoT: Data Integrity and Security

The Internet of Things (IoT) is undoubtedly going to play a major role in the workplace.  Because an employer has a number of critical employee-related interests in securing IoT data, including protecting securing otherwise private employee and business information as well as protecting trade secrets, employment lawyers should be in the conversation with the technology acquisition and development teams as they develop an IoT acquisition policy.  Here is how to create such a policy.

Continue reading “Procuring IoT: Data Integrity and Security”

Employee Terminations: Handle with Care

Employee terminations – whether voluntary or not – must be handled properly in order to ensure optimal risk management.  Employment lawyers cannot leave the technology-related aspects of a termination to others.

Continue reading “Employee Terminations: Handle with Care”

Proactive Privacy

Employment lawyers should look beyond mere compliance with privacy regulation and engage in what I call “Proactive Privacy.”

Proactive Privacy is creating a privacy-aware corporate culture that educates all employees about privacy (and cybersecurity) and motivates them to be a part of that culture.  In short, it extends your privacy demands beyond the punitive and into the normative. (Of course, clear policies and expectations remain critical!).

Continue reading “Proactive Privacy”

Cyber-Resilience: The Next Really Big Thing

This is not the year of cybersecurity as some might suggest.  It is the year of cyber-resilience.  This is a matter for employment lawyers to understand as a core part of their employment litigation risk management role.

In this somewhat longer piece, I will cover:

  • Cyber-Resiliency: Definition
  • The Cyber-Resiliency Imperative In General
  • The Cyber-Resiliency Imperative For Employers
  • Cyber-Resiliency in Practice

Continue reading “Cyber-Resilience: The Next Really Big Thing”

8 Trends in the Transformation of Tech-Related Employment Law

2015 will see the broadening and deepening of the transformation of tech-related employment law.

Here are eight reasons why:

Continue reading “8 Trends in the Transformation of Tech-Related Employment Law”

Big Data: Critical Concerns for Employment Lawyers

The price of data storage and sophisticated analytics are dropping.  This will herald a sea-change in how employment cases are litigated, including both class actions (initially) and individual cases (eventually).  Employment lawyers will need to:

  • be involved in data governance;
  • apply basic statistical methods to the results of data mining; and
  • get deep “under the hood” of the data scientist’s work product.

Continue reading “Big Data: Critical Concerns for Employment Lawyers”

ESI and Data Governance: Part 2

Data Governance:  Controls and Culture

As said, ESI is an increasingly understood and litigated issue.  What requiresExplore-the-Data much more thought by employment lawyers is data governance.  Data governance is the system of rules and procedure  that relate to how an enterprise’s ESI is stored, managed, used, merged, deleted, and transferred.

Continue reading “ESI and Data Governance: Part 2”

ESI and Data Governance: Part 1

The Basics

Enterprises of all sizes store troves of information in many different Explore-the-Dataforms and formats about their employees — and these data pools will undoubtedly multiply over the coming years.  Employment lawyers will be required to interact with technical personnel to assess preservation and if necessary, supervise production.

So, what’s an employment lawyer to do?  Turn to data governance!

Let’s first look at some basics first, and then, in my next post, we will turn to the heart of this area: data governance for employment lawyers.

Continue reading “ESI and Data Governance: Part 1”