Through its close proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean, South Florida has evolved into one of Latin America’s top cities for investments and business dealings by offering companies international connections, a highly diverse community, and a large concentration of foreign-born workers. With immigrants at the forefront of entrepreneurial businesses, it is no surprise that South Florida has been nationally and internationally recognized as leading the way into the next revolutionary technological wave.
Just this last month, Miami hosted eMerge Americas, a five-day summit that focused not only on presenting the newest companies and most state-of-the-art trends in technology, but also, on forging relationships between Latin America’s top business executives and technological visionaries and global industry leaders.
Fueling South Florida’s technological growth and development, the international software company Microsoft, announced earlier this year that it chose South Florida as a flagship city for one of its first trademarked innovation centers. The Microsoft centers program will serve as an innovative environment to improve technological training and understanding in local communities.
Accompanying the recent rise in technological advances is the new, heightened concern over the collection of customer personal data by businesses throughout a wide array of industries, including, travel, finance, education, entertainment, healthcare, media, service and commercial.
South Florida businesses face three challenges. The first challenge they face is compliance with both U.S. federal and state laws. The second challenge is compliance with the individual Latin American countries’ data privacy laws. The third and final challenge is the market forces that are requiring companies to address data privacy when the aforementioned regulations are not enough.
To meet these challenges, companies need to recognize and protect against privacy gaps, thoroughly assessing a company’s risk analysis and appropriate breach management, and adopting policies that ensure compliance with ongoing and fast-changing government regulations, companies would build defenses against legal and business-related consequences. The purpose of these safeguards is to protect consumers against a data breach, but also to contain a data breach when it happens.
Failure to appropriately input safeguards may not only result in legal liability and regulatory sanctions, but potential ramifications also lie in damage to one’s business reputation, customer distrust, and reduced revenue, as seen by recent resignation of Target’s CEO as a result of the major data breach earlier this year, among others.
Please contact us should you have any questions or inquiries regarding data privacy policy, U.S. immigration laws, or related business advisory services. Our bilingual attorneys and professional consultants understand these issues and also have a unique perspective of the South Florida marketplace.
