What is the CCPA?
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a new data privacy law that establishes various rights and protections for California state residents’ Personal Information. The CCPA also imposes corresponding obligations on Businesses who handle such Personal Information.
What does the CCPA define as Personal Information?
The CCPA defines Personal Information as information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household such as a real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, social security number, driver's license number, passport number, or other similar identifiers. Notably, however, the CCPA does not consider publicly available information as personal.
Four new rights
The rights bestowed to California consumers include:
Right to Know
The right to know what personal information businesses are collecting about consumers and how that information is being used and shared.
Right to Delete
The right to delete personal information held by businesses.
Right to Stop Sale
The right to stop the sale of personal information by businesses.
Right to Non-Discrimination
The right to nondiscrimination in service and price when exercising privacy rights.
What is a Business under the CCPA?
The CCPA defines a Business as an entity that:
- Does business in the State of California;
- Collects personal information (or on behalf of which such information is collected);
- Alone or jointly with others determines the purposes or means of processing of that data; and,
- Satisfies at least one of the following thresholds:
- Has annual gross revenues in excess of $25 million;
- Buys or sells the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers or households; or,
- Earns more than half of its annual revenue from selling consumers' personal information.
While Files.com is not considered a Business under the CCPA, we are a Service Provider for customers who are Businesses and store Personal Information on Files.com.
What is a Service Provider under the CCPA?
The CCPA defines a Service Provider as a for-profit legal entity that processes Personal Information on behalf of a Business pursuant to a written contract for a business purpose. Businesses may use Service Providers and share Personal Information with them. It is not considered a sale of Personal Information if:
- The sharing of personal information is necessary to perform a business purpose,
- The Business has provided notice that the information is being used or shared, and,
- The Service Provider does not further collect, sell or use the personal information of the consumer except as necessary to perform the business purpose.
CCPA Service Provider Addendum
For customers who are Businesses under the CCPA and will be storing Personal Information on Files.com, we have a standard CCPA Service Provider Addendum. Contact us for a copy of this Addendum.
CCPA also Mandates Data Security Measures
Not only does the CCPA highlight privacy concerns, it also mandates “the duty to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices” to protect Personal Information. While the California Attorney General’s office does not require a specific security model, framework, or standard, they published a “Data Breach Report” in 2016 which analyzed the recent history of data breaches across industries and identified security lapses that led to those breaches.
The report listed safeguards that the then-current Attorney General viewed as constituting reasonable security practices, emphasizing a set of twenty data security controls published by the Center for Internet Security (commonly referred to as the “CIS Top 20”).
Files.com Features Useful for CCPA Compliance
Files.com provides world-class features and tools which allow an organization to meet their own privacy and security policies, procedures, standards, baselines and guidelines.
Below are just a few such features that Businesses concerned with CCPA Compliance may find useful, including a relevant CIS Top 20 Control:
| Files.com Feature | CIS Top 20 Control |
|---|---|
| Security Bug Bounty | Continuous Vulnerability Management |
| Penetration Testing | Continuous Vulnerability Management |
| Full management delegation and group administration | Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges |
| Provision, authenticate, and authorize users via LDAP, Active Directory, Azure, ADFS, Okta, OneLogin, Auth0, and many other identity providers | Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges |
| Enterprise Identity Management features even work with our Desktop app, unlike competing products | Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges |
| Live searchable logs of all operations. Logs are retained in live searchable format for up to 7 years (and can optionally be retained in text format forever) | Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges |
| Connect via all standard protocols including FTP, SFTP, FTPS, FTPES, WebDAV, Zapier, Microsoft Flow, our REST API, and SDKs available in many languages | Limitation and Control of Network Ports, Protocols and Services |
| Custom Inboxes allow anyone to securely send your company files even without an account | Limitation and Control of Network Ports, Protocols and Services |
| Share Links allow your company to share files outbound to anyone without them having account and support expiration dates, notes, descriptions, and individual passwords for security | Limitation and Control of Network Ports, Protocols and Services |
| Flexible data retention management with custom data retention windows for each user, group, or folder Content type policy enforcement | Data Recovery Capabilities |
| Encryption-at-rest and support for optional customer-managed GPG keys | Data Protection |
| Strong encryption in transit with a free custom SSL certificate for your custom domain | Data Protection |
| REST API and SDKs for many popular programming languages. All features (including 2FA and SSO) are supported in the API | Data Protection |
| Highly configurable security settings including password policies, session policies, 2FA policies, and brute force rules | Account Monitoring and Control |
| Wide variety of 2FA support: Yubikey, FIDO/U2F,Google Authenticator, Duo, Authy, and SMS | Account Monitoring and Control |
For a full listing of Files.com features, please visit our Features page.
Talk to us
If you have any questions about storing or transferring Personal Information protected under CCPA on your Files.com account, you can contact us.
The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information and content available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Readers of this website are responsible for making their own independent assessment and should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter, including compliance with any applicable state or local laws or regulations.