Leading privacy vendor OneTrust, in a surprise announcement, said it will be laying off 950 workers, which is 25% of its workforce. This comes despite a statement last month that the company had record growth quarters and was seeing increased customer demand. However, the company’s announcement indicates they decided it best to scale back in response to a potentially tightening market.
A bipartisan anti-trust bill that looks like it may have sufficient Senate votes to move on to Congress could prevent Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and other major technology companies from favoring their own platforms to keep smaller companies from being able to compete. Big Tech companies have countered that it will be harder for them to ensure privacy and security…but, given their records, maybe it can be cause to improve.
Maryland adds strict guidelines to business requirements following security breaches. An amendment to the state’s Personal Information Protection Act going into effect this fall specifies that businesses must inform data owners or licensees of within 10 days of a breach, and companies must also notify major media within the geographic region where individuals are likely to reside.
The U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested the sale of the Chrome browser among other measures following last August’s guilty verdict in its search advertising antitrust suit (not to be confused with last week’s guilty verdict in the adtech antitrust lawsuit). Google is asking for a much narrower focus on deals to be the default search engine for Apple, Mozilla and others. There will be a three-week hearing on the government’s proposals.