Guide to Canada’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA)

In this guide:

1. What is Canada’s CPPA?
2. How to achieve business compliance
3. Why Privacy Bee is key

 

What is Canada’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA)?

The Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA) is a Canadian federal law focused on protecting the privacy rights of consumers. At its core, it is an expansion of Canada’s existing Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which was the most comprehensive data privacy law in the country previously. However, PIPEDA had some implied impacts which have now been codified under the CPPA, and this new Act includes some additional provisions as well. The CPPA is an evolution of Canadian data privacy law focused on keeping people’s information safe and only used for appropriate business reasons with proper consent. Enforcement began in 2023.

The CPPA and PIPEDA are both focused on protecting personal privacy in Canada, but there are some key differences:

Scope:

• PIPEDA applies broadly to personal information collected, used, or disclosed by private sector organizations in the course of commercial activity.
• CPPA has a more targeted scope centered specifically around consumer privacy rights and e-commerce/online activity, but it should be noted this supplements PIPEDA and does not replace it.

Consent:

• CPPA establishes new requirements for obtaining meaningful, informed consent for collection and use of data. More explicit consent is mandated today.
• PIPEDA has more basic consent requirements.

Individual rights:

• CPPA introduces new individual data rights – like data access and correction, detailed below.
• PIPEDA provides fewer direct rights focused on consumers controlling their data. These were implied previously, but not specifically enumerated.

Oversight & enforcement:

• CPPA grants expanded investigation and enforcement powers to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to ensure compliance. With this increased power, the Privacy Commissioner can now enforce bigger penalties for violations.
• PIPEDA has relatively limited oversight and enforcement tools in comparison. Again, these were created to start the process of accountability for organizations without being overly restrictive.

While PIPEDA established baseline privacy protection for personal information, the CPPA updates data protection with an emphasis on the privacy rights and controls of consumers in the modern digital economy. It aims to hold companies more accountable through stricter consent, access, and enforcement measures.

To achieve this goal, the CPPA grants specific enumerated rights to Canadian citizens and individuals living in Canada:

1. The right to transparency: Requires companies collecting your personal data to explain what is being collected and how it will be used in a clear and understandable manner before obtaining your consent.
2. The right to meaningful consent: Companies must obtain your consent before collecting, using or disclosing your personal information. Consents also need to be easy for you to withdraw at any time.
3. The right of data minimization: Companies should only collect, use, keep and share the minimum amount of your information necessary to fulfill an explicitly identified purpose. They cannot collect extraneous data beyond what is absolutely needed.
4. The right to data accuracy: You have the right to request corrections to inaccurate or incomplete personal data a company holds about you. Inaccuracies must be corrected in a timely manner.
5. The right to access: Upon request, you have the right to know what personal data a company has collected about you, how they are using it, who they are sharing it with, and to obtain copies in a portable format you can share elsewhere if desired.
6. The right to erasure: In certain cases, you can request the complete deletion of some or all your personal information held by a company, such as when consent is withdrawn. Specific data retention limitations apply.

These represent all of the new consumer data rights introduced under the CPPA to bolster personal privacy protection. If an individual feels these rights have been violated by an organization, complaints can be submitted directly to Canada’s Privacy Commissioner.

While most of the new provisions under the CPPA place additional obligations on businesses, this can be an opportunity for organizations to differentiate their practices and build consumer trust if done properly. Since compliance is a must anyways and will help avoid costly fines, businesses need to be aware of the latest updates and best practices to go above and beyond.

How to achieve business compliance

The Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA) has created some significant impacts for businesses operating in Canada, creating additional cost implications and limitations. Those embracing privacy best practices have an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by building consumer trust around data stewardship. The global data privacy landscape shows us that more laws are being implemented every day with plenty on the way, and each regulation continues to tighten data protection requirements. Strong data governance principles are going to be rewarded in the short and long term.

Businesses need to consider the specific impacts of Canada’s CPPA, which include:

1. Increased compliance obligations: Businesses must dedicate more resources to understanding CPPA requirements and ensuring data practices align with mandated transparency, consent, individual rights, and data handling policies.
2. Greater accountability: Stricter consent rules and enforcement powers mean businesses are being held more accountable for how they collect, use, and disclose personal information. Violations can lead to hefty fines.
3. Right to erasure obligations: New requirements to delete consumer data upon request require investments in data systems and retention processes to enable more precise erasure and tracking capabilities.
4. Consumer trust building: Clearer data management practices enforced by the CPPA provide an opportunity for businesses adhering to high privacy standards to differentiate themselves and build greater consumer trust through transparency.
5. Marketing constraints: Tighter consent requirements create some burdens for marketing teams to appropriately obtain and document opt-in consent for consumer communications and data usage.
6. Technology investments: Upgrading existing data infrastructure, analytics practices, and consumer interfaces to properly gather consent while giving consumers easier access to their data may require significant technology investments.

There are many widespread impacts on organizations, but these are quite similar to those contained in data privacy laws around the world. Thus, compliance with one typically helps with compliance for most, as many laws are modeled after leading legislation like the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The following best practices are a great place to start for any organization needing to enhance their current data privacy practices or start new processes from scratch.

• Review data collection processes and minimize unnecessary personal data collection. Remove any over-collection to align with the data minimization principle.
• Audit consent protocols across consumer touch points to ensure clear communication and documented opt-in consent for data usage meets CPPA’s “meaningful consent” standard.
• Build more granular consumer preference management capabilities allowing withdrawal of specific consents easily. Automate data deletion upon opt-out where feasible.
• Implement robust cybersecurity protocols like encryption to protect consumer data and prevent unauthorized access or transfer of information per CPPA safeguard requirements. Document all of the steps taken in detail, just in case a breach does occur, as it will help the case with the Privacy Commissioner.
• Develop strong data governance policies addressing CPPA-mandated consumer rights, like ensuring timely responses to data correction and access requests. Assign organizational responsibility in a clear manner.
• Train staff, especially consumer-facing roles, on CPPA privacy guidelines and consumer rights. Ensure adherence in interactions.
• Stay updated on CPPA oversight activities, complaint investigations, and tribunal rulings to continually refine compliance practices to evolving interpretations.
• Conduct frequent audits and privacy impact assessments to verify operational policies and technology controls uphold CPPA obligations. Document all due diligence.

Proactively embracing CPPA privacy norms through policies, staffing, processes and technologies demonstrates an organization’s commitment to lawful and ethical data stewardship. Any company looking to thrive in the digital age needs to be proactive in implementing a cohesive set of business practices to care for data privacy and protection today.

Why Privacy Bee is key

Protecting personal data while providing the required information about data usage is imperative for businesses engaged in online service delivery today. New regulations sprout up around the world every day, requiring more stringent opt-in policies while granting consumers more rights. The public now has the ability to review and remove their personal data, increasing the accountability of every organization processing personal identifiable information (PII).

Despite the addition of new regulations in more countries every year, the responsibility still falls primarily on the individual to oversee, assess, update and delete (via DSAR request) their personal data wherever it may be collected and dispersed across the internet. This process becomes a massive undertaking when working to cover an entire organization, rendering it practically impossible for a single person or small team to manage without outside professional help. But it’s important. The identification and subsequent elimination of this data plays a pivotal role in deterring cybercriminals from launching dangerous social engineering attacks against an organization.

That’s where Privacy Bee emerges as the solution, simplifying the time-consuming process of monitoring and eradicating employee personal data for business leaders. It’s especially effective for executives who are highly visible to the general public. Using sophisticated automation processes backed by an active human service team, Privacy Bee substantially reduces a company’s attack surface and mitigates the looming threat of a data breach.

Social engineering attacks are the fastest-growing data breach threat, no matter how mature an organization’s cybersecurity program is today. If it isn’t already covered, then threat actors still have a way to target your organization’s most sensitive information.

Hopefully, you are already conducting risk assessments and vendor surveys. If so, kudos to you! However, it is still essential to recognize vendors are most susceptible to a breach via social engineering attacks relying on exposed data. Privacy Bee not only minimizes the proliferation of your organization’s data across the vast digital landscape but also extends its protection to vendors, helping you ensure third party partners do not serve as the weak link in your security defenses or put you at risk of noncompliance.

Who is causing data exposures and these attacks?

In the growing billion-dollar surveillance industry, Data Brokers and People Search Sites have assumed pivotal roles, reaping record-breaking profits by trading and transferring your organization’s information with obscure and uncontrollable entities. These entities then either publish this information or compile it all to sell on again, and suddenly your personal data can be easily found after a quick Google Search.

The consequences of private data exposure are far-reaching and pose significant threats if the information can be quickly obtained by malicious cybercriminals. If it’s as simple as a quick search to find you and your coworker’s information, then threat actors can launch cyberattacks at scale by targeting the most vulnerable team members with emotionally engaging messaging that turn even the most highly-trained professionals into victims. The only way to prevent this is by stopping the data flow at the source. The consequences are simply too costly to risk.

A solitary data breach leads to massive productivity losses, expensive remediation efforts, and recurring breach incidents. This isn’t new, and is a predicament that plagues the vast majority of businesses following an initial breach. Industry estimates state as many as 83% of organizations who experienced a data breach go on to experience multiple. That is staggering, and is exactly what Privacy Bee is fighting back against. The initial data breach sets off a chain reaction that inflicts short-term damage on your bottom line while eroding brand value and customer trust over time. Furthermore, there are ripple effects to consider, such as heightened employee turnover due to poaching.

Privacy Bee combats threat actors lurking beyond your organization’s perimeters. By meticulously pinpointing every location across the internet where sensitive data resides and swiftly purging it, Privacy Bee closes the data security gap. The service even encompasses dark web monitoring and provides timely data breach notifications if another company falls victim to an exploitation incident and potentially exposes your information in the process.

Our unwavering commitment is deeply rooted in the belief that privacy is an inalienable human right that transcends political discourse and negotiations. This is why Privacy Bee vigilantly monitors user data for security vulnerabilities while holding the surveillance industry accountable. We compel Data Brokers, People Search Sites, and more than 150,000 additional websites to expunge your stored data and opt out of further data collection to protect you, your family, and your entire organization.

Privacy Bee protection covers a wide range of potential threats, including:

• Data breaches
• Social engineering attacks
• Doxxing
• Identity theft
• Spam emails
• Telemarketing calls
• Cyberstalking
• Swatting
• Blackmail

Privacy Bee is a powerful tool for business leaders who want to protect their employee and customer data. In today’s world, where privacy is more important and harder to come by than ever, you need a trusted partner fighting to preserve your personal and organizational integrity.