Lois Carter Schlissel Featured in Long Island Business News, "Forecast 2017: Law and Government"

Cybersecurity regulation compliance will keep many legal and financial professionals occupied in 2017. New York’s new rules requiring financial services companies to implement safeguards against cyberattack (including annual reporting and cyber “event” notifications) will go into effect March 1, 2017. Legal counsel and RegTech companies will help banks and other financial institutions navigate the rising flood of cybersecurity regulations developed by federal and state agencies. Institutions that do business nationally will need to comply with state regulations imposed by more than 40 states regarding procedures to be followed in the event of a security breach. Many of these recently-promulgated state rules have inconsistent definitions of basic cybersecurity terms, such as “breach” and “private data”, as well as varying notice regulations, making compliance a challenge for even the most astute.

Uncertainty as to the direction the Trump administration will steer Department of Labor wage and hour enforcement also will provide challenges in 2017. A late 2016 injunction temporarily halted the new white-collar overtime rules. The ultimate fate of those federal rules now rests in the hands of the courts and may well be called into question by the new administration. Meanwhile, on December 31, 2016, New York implemented its own new minimum wage and white collar overtime rules, which rules vary significantly depending on the employer’s size, location and industry.

It’s a fairly safe New Year prediction that government regulations in these and other business-critical areas will command the attention of Long Island business owners and their counsel in 2017.