Taft summer associate Jordan Jennings-Moore contributed to this article.

In today’s world, very few people remain completely unscathed by a data breach somewhere. From Target, to Anthem, Wendy’s or Equifax, individuals across the country have grown accustomed to getting breach notification letters. Most recently, Alabama and South Dakota became the last two jurisdictions in the United States to adopt data breach notification laws. This means that any person or entity conducting business in the U.S. must be prepared to protect personal identifying information (PII) belonging to customers, clients, and employees.

Encryption is an easy way to protect PII. It wasn’t always that way, but technologies have made it easier and cheaper to do. And this has legal benefits. A common trend seen amongst all U.S. jurisdictions is an encryption exception to providing notice of a data breach. Why? Well, because encrypted data is not “personal data.” Therefore, loss of encrypted data is often not a “breach” under the law. Encryption saves you time, your reputation and thousands, if not millions, of dollars. That’s huge.

During her time at Taft, our Dayton summer associate Jordan Jennings followed the trends of data breach notification laws and worked with me on updating our materials to reflect the ever changing world of state privacy and security law (i.e. California). I asked her to pitch in on this update and report on some of her findings below. (Spoiler alert: encryption is a pretty big deal.)Continue Reading Don’t Be Too Big for Your Breaches! Why Encrypted Data Can Be the Best Way to Avoid a Data “Breach”