Is a United States GDPR Coming?

GDPR Movement is Headed to North America

While MSPs in Europe are dealing with GDPR, in the United States, the signs are everywhere that a US focused "GDPR" may soon be a reality. The attorney general for the state of Missouri has just opened up an antitrust and consumer protection investigation against Google. While many would see this as unimportant, the rationale behind the investigation has many similarities with Europe.

General concern regarding European data being handled by large public cloud vendors (like Google) was a significant reason behind the GDPR. Those same reasons have just as much validity here in the United States as they did in Europe. Now, as a user of Google products, I should point out that GDPR was not about Google, but about all public cloud vendors where massive amounts of user data is impacted. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and others, are all implicated in what I would classify as a general revolt concerning data privacy and security in the public cloud.

Should MSPs Be Concerned?

In short? Yes. MSPs need to be aware of these larger issues and battles, even if they appear to be far away and unconcerned with the daily operations of every day MSPs. Just as GDPR began as an attempt to safeguard consumer data in the public cloud, it is already having a real and significant impact on MSPs with European customers.

Similarly, a US focused "GDPR" legislation could have an equally real and significant impact for MSPs operating in the United States. We will have to see.

The investigation into public cloud vendors is what I will be watching. Those actions and their findings will ultimately play into whether the US ends up under our own data privacy and security regulation.