Health Law Advisor

On September 2-3, 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) hosted the Safeguarding Health Information: Building Assurance Through HIPAA Security 2026 conference.

This post shares takeaways in three key areas highlighted at the conference.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) gives consumers increasingly more control over their personal information when collected by businesses subject to the law. We have previously discussed the compliance requirements of these data privacy laws on organizations doing business in California.[1] Significantly, CCPA/CPRA defines the term “consumer” to mean any California resident; which from a business perspective, such a broad definition encompasses not only the business’s individual customers, but also its employees, job-applicants or even business-to-business (B2B) contacts.  With the moratoriums currently in place for B2B and employee/applicant data sunsetting on January 1, 2023 and not likely to be extended, and the prospect for federal data privacy legislation with wide preemptive effect of state law looking less likely, businesses should be actively preparing to meet these expanded statutory obligations.