Data Dive

Akin Gump published a client alert on Bulgaria’s biggest ever data breach. On 15 July 2019, an unprecedented cyber-attack in Bulgaria was announced. Hackers have stolen data from the National Revenue Agency (“NRA”) relating to around 70% of Bulgaria’s population, including foreign nationals and businesses, and comprising names of individuals and companies, personal and corporate identification numbers, email addresses, healthcare and pension contributions information and income details. According to news reports, the Bulgarian Government had thus far considered the NRA system to be one of the most advanced systems, into which substantial and continuous investment has been made. By contrast, the hackers claimed the opposite. The Chairman of Bulgaria’s Commission for Personal Data Protection announced that he would commence an investigation against NRA. In the wake of such a large-scale cyber-attack, we consider certain steps which organisations and individuals might take in the context of cybersecurity and data breach.

Please click here to read the full alert.

We attended Shoptalk 2019 for the second year in a row where we heard from industry leaders on the digital transformation affecting nearly all consumer-facing businesses, and added our perspectives on the changing legal and compliance landscape. The concepts of retail evolution, rapid innovation cycles, growing omnichannel business, increased automation and product and experiential differentiation framed this event. Leaders from many of the world’s leading businesses in retail, technology, media, direct-to-consumer, financial services, shipping and logistics, and grocery—as well as private equity firms, venture capital investors, consulting firms, business school professors and start-ups—led five tracks of substantive sessions, gave keynote addresses and presented “tabletalk” lectures.