Partner Robert deBrauwere, co-chair of Pryor Cashman’s Digital Media Group, spoke to Law360 for its December 24, 2015 article, “Privacy Legislation And Regulation To Watch in 2016.”

The article reports that privacy issues will grab the spotlight in both the U.S. and European Union in 2016, with attorneys keeping their eye on high-stakes negotiations to replace a popular trans-Atlantic data-transfer mechanism as well as legislation that will ramp up companies' data protection and cybersecurity obligations on both sides of the Atlantic.

Since the European Court of Justice’s surprising invalidation of the U.S.- EU safe harbor data transfer mechanism in October, the clock is ticking for the European Commission and U.S. Department of Commerce to reach an agreement on an alternative.

deBrauwere told Law360: "Right now, we’re at the point where leading U.S. companies that are transferring data from the EU to the U.S. have to ramp up their use of alternate mechanisms for compliance. It will be important to watch how that is resolved, and whether there will be some mechanism in place to facilitate that transfer of information as opposed to the ad hoc situations that are existing now."