Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

Morgan Lewis has recently issued several LawFlashes on the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, providing a number of resources for businesses across the globe dealing with various compliance challenges and unanswered questions.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) published a report on January 27 outlining various industry practices and approaches to managing and combating cybersecurity risks and maintaining operation resiliency. The OCIE observed these practices through conducting thousands of examinations, and hopes that organizations can use the report to enhance their own cybersecurity preparedness and operational resiliency.

Washington may be the next state to enact its own data privacy law after a bill was introduced into the Washington State Senate earlier this month. Known as the Washington Privacy Act, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Reuven Carlyle, stated at a press conference that lawmakers had reached “95 percent agreement in principle on the core elements of the bill.”

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, cybersecurity journalist Catherine Stupp drew attention to the massive surge in internet-connected devices expected to be in use by the end of 2020.

Open Banking is an initiative mandated by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in 2017. It is intended to facilitate better competition in the banking sector by mandating protocols that facilitate the secure sharing of customer-related data of the nine largest banks in the United Kingdom (CMA9) with third-party providers (TPPs).

Please join us for a dynamic webinar on hot issues impacting the structuring and negotiation of ecommerce contracts in 2020.

For years, there has been a persistent trend toward outsourcing retirement plan recordkeeping and other administrative responsibilities. Although historically more prevalent for defined contribution plans, this outsourcing trend has been accelerating for defined benefit plans thanks, in part, to the prevalence of frozen plans (i.e., no more benefit accruals) and the potential for administrative cost savings.

The Clearing House (the oldest banking association and payments company in the United States) recently released a model agreement as a voluntary starting point to facilitate data sharing between financial institutions and fintech companies.

The EU Commission issued its report on the third annual review of the functioning of the EU-US Privacy Shield (Privacy Shield) on October 23.

A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) established that companies seeking to store “cookies” that are used to track online browsing behavior must obtain “active consent.” The ruling is likely to cause angst among companies, which often maintain websites that are not set up to obtain active consent, as well as with internet users who are increasingly frustrated by having to continually provide consent while visiting websites.