Trust, not data, is the most valuable currency for businesses today. But current data practices do nothing to earn that trust, and we can’t count on regulation alone to change that. When the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) rolled out on January 1st, many companies were still scrambling to become compliant with the data privacy regulation.

H/T: TechCrunch

California Rings In The New Year With A New Data Privacy Law #COMIS20 https://t.co/66Y7LEHSMf — Kim Hower (@KimHower1) February 12, 2020

According to California's own impact assessment, which was prepared for the state attorney general’s office by Berkeley Economic and Advising and Research, direct compliance costs for businesses will reach between $467 million and approximately $16.5 billion by 2030, with a total cost of initial compliance of $55 billion.

FLASHBACK: CCPA compliance costs projected to reach $55B https://t.co/89Kd7aay7o — DeepClips (@DeepClips) February 13, 2020

This is a drop in the bucket to large companies, especially those betting that data is the product.

And trust may indeed be a valuable currency for all business, but it's consumer data that is fueling the Artificial Intelligence revolution. This provides hackers and other state actors all the incentive they need to break in and steal large data repositories.

Just this week, the DOJ announced that four members of the Chinese military had been indicted on charges of hacking into credit-reporting agency Equifax and stealing data on almost 150 million Americans.