As countries follow the EU's lead and update their own data protection legislation, 70% of the world's ten most populous countries, including China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, have either introduced new data protection legislation, or plan to do so.

At the same time, 13 US states have proposed regulations in the works, with the California Consumer Privacy Act the first to pass into law, becoming effective on January 1, 2020.

While legislation is increasing, the threats to data privacy are also changing. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of data breaches caused by hacking are falling, while those due to unauthorized access have trebled from 11% to 30% over the last 12 months.

Organizations can make a good first step in ensuring compliance with whatever legislation exists by understanding and protecting their data, introducing DevOps processes to database development, and then watching over their data.

This whitepaper looks at why data privacy has become an issue, provides an update on data protection legislation around the world, identifies common emerging themes, and outlines ten steps businesses can take to be compliant wherever they are.