This Privacy Regulation Roundup summarizes the latest major global privacy regulatory developments, announcements, and changes. This report is updated monthly. For each relevant regulatory activity, you can find actionable Info-Tech analyst insights and links to useful Info-Tech research that can assist you with becoming compliant.
EU's Strategic Reset on GDPR and AI Act
Type: Legislation
Proposed: November 2025
Affected Region: EU
Summary: To simplify Europe’s increasingly complex digital regulatory environment, the European Commission (EC) has released two major reform proposals. The goal is to update the GDPR, the AI Act, and other relevant data laws while strengthening the EU’s ability to innovate. The EC aims to maintain its high standards for privacy and safety but reduce unnecessary administrative burdens.
The proposals introduce targeted GDPR amendments allowing legitimate interests as a clearer basis for certain AI-related data processing. It further proposes radical simplification of cookie consent and creating a single breach-notification portal to replace overlapping reporting obligations.
The EC has also proposed updates to the AI Act. Most notably, delaying the start of high-risk AI obligations until needed standards and tools are ready, but no later than December 2027. Similar to the proposed GDPR updates, EC intends to reduce documentation burdens for smaller organizations. Oversight of general-purpose AI models would be centralized through a more empowered AI Office.
The reforms seek to unlock high-quality data sets for AI development. While industry groups are generally supporting this simplification initiative, civil-society organizations have warned that the approach risks weakening privacy protections and fundamental rights. The proposals will move into negotiations with the European Parliament and Council, where significant changes may occur.
Analyst Perspective: After years of building the world’s strictest privacy and platform rules, the EU is looking to shift toward regulatory pragmatism. The reforms aim to preserve high privacy standards while reducing operational friction for businesses. As such, they stand to gain meaningful efficiencies.
SMEs, in particular, are allowed more breathing room and smoother paths to AI deployment although only if they invest into building mature governance capabilities rather than deferring them. The same flexibilities that streamline business operations also elevate privacy risks.
A broader legitimate-interests basis for AI could lower the effective threshold for high-risk data uses. Simplified cookie banners may still be exploited through interface design choices. This means, on one end of the spectrum, EU data regulation becomes more dependent on responsible implementation by organizations.
The EU is embarking on a journey of accelerating innovation and competitiveness amid geopolitical pressure. If the proposals are adopted, the success of the approach will hinge on how effectively organizations and regulators navigate this new, more flexible governance landscape and its impact on individuals.
Analyst: Safayat Moahamad, Research Director – Security & Privacy
More Reading:
- Source Material: IAPP
- Related Info-Tech Research:
California's Approach to AI Regulation
Type: Legislation
Enacted: September
2025
Affected Region: USA
Summary: California’s new Senate Bill (SB) 53 introduced the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act. Industry professionals have been intrigued to learn how similar or otherwise it may be compared to the EU AI Act. While the EU AI Act governs the entire AI lifecycle, SB 53 is intentionally narrow. It applies only to organizations training or materially modifying frontier foundation models and generates over $500 million in annual revenue.
As written, the law will affect only a handful of major AI labs. It imposes limited but public-facing obligations, including the requirement for large frontier developers to publish a “frontier AI framework” detailing intended uses and risk mitigation. Its incident-reporting and enforcement mechanisms, though real, are narrowly scoped compared to the EU’s much broader conformity assessments, continuous monitoring expectations, and penalties.
For multinational organizations, the reality is that the EU AI Act remains the dominant burden, particularly for those deploying or integrating AI systems into business operations. SB 53 is best understood as a targeted governance layer aimed at preventing high-impact misuse of frontier-scale models. While most enterprises may not meet SB 53’s thresholds, it may serve well to be aware that regulators are increasingly demanding transparency, risk documentation, and rapid incident reporting as AI capabilities accelerate.
SB 53 may not reshape the compliance landscape, but it signals the emergence of frontier-model governance as a distinct regulatory category. Major AI developers will need to treat these models as both public and accountable.
Analyst Perspective: Given where the market is heading, SB 53 is less a broad regulatory mandate and more a strategic signal. California is drawing a boundary around frontier-scale AI development without burdening the thousands of organizations that simply deploy. This is deliberate. The State is targeting a handful of companies building models powerful enough to introduce catastrophic risks, leaving everyone else outside the scope.
For most organizations, the EU AI Act should remain the driver of an AI governance framework, which also aligns with SB 53's expectation of greater transparency, incident reporting, and more disciplined risk management.
Analyst: John Donovan, Principal Research Director – Infrastructure and Operations
More Reading:
- Source Material: IAPP
- Related Info-Tech Research:
Ontario's De-Identification Guidelines Set New Standard
Announced:
October 2025
Affected Region: Canada
Summary: Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commission (OIPC) has released a major update to its De-Identification Guidelines for Structured Data. The revised guidelines modernize the framework to reflect new de-identification techniques, global regulatory developments, and emerging risk-assessment methods. They include educational material, practical examples, and step-by-step checklists to help organizations of all sizes safely transform and share data.
Commissioner Patricia Kosseim emphasized that the guidance is intended to be sector-agnostic and scalable. This should support innovation in areas like healthcare, education, and public services while reducing reidentification risk. The update was shaped through extensive stakeholder engagement, which included the Canadian Anonymization Network, among others.
A key addition is the suite of practical implementation checklists, which provide structured guidance for practitioners and leaders without turning the process into a simple checkbox exercise. The OIPC stresses that de-identification is not a one-time action, but an ongoing governance practice requiring continuous monitoring, reassessment, and documentation as contexts, technologies, and use cases evolve.
Analyst Perspective: Although OIPC's de-identification guidelines are not legally binding, they clearly articulate what the regulator considers leading practice. That makes them a de facto standard of care for any organization handling structured data in the province, especially those serving or partnering with the public sector.
Operationally, the shift to a checklist-driven playbook transforms de-identification from a technical discipline into a repeatable and auditable process, allowing smaller organizations to follow baseline controls while larger institutions may apply more advanced methods.
Organizations are advised to monitor purpose of use or context shifts, update risk assessments, and document decisions throughout the data lifecycle. Combined with increasing litigation risks and procurement pressures, the guidelines push organizations toward more structured privacy governance, stronger vendor oversight, and defensible documentation that shows diligence in managing reidentification risk.
Analyst: Safayat Moahamad, Research Director – Security & Privacy
More Reading:
- Source Material: IAPP
- Related Info-Tech Research:
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