Trust in Data & Technology
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We’re extremely excited to share Ethyca with the world (well, those reading this). Over a year ago, we started to work quietly on an engineering problem that is painful for developer teams everywhere and at the same time vital for the safety of every user of internet and data powered businesses.

Everyone is talking about data privacy, breaches, system safety/integrity and regulation. Mostly this is articulated by businesses as a fear of fines with the knee jerk reaction being to find a quick ‘bandaid’ to avoid the risk. We found this disappointing on two fronts:

  1. As developers, the friction introduced in CI/CD and the additional human overhead needed to manage data privacy is Sisyphean without any tangible improvement in the end user’s data safety. 
  2. As people who work in technology, we found it disappointing that our talented industry, particularly those companies that have seen ‘hockey stick’ growth curves on their user bases and untold financial gain are not taking their users needs more directly to heart.

We believe there has to be a better way. One that minimizes friction for developer and product teams while maximizing the privacy controls in place around user data. We also believe the solution to better user privacy is not just regulations but code. 

Our mission at Ethyca is to increase trust in internet and data-driven businesses. Benefiting developer teams and end users equally.

Our team of engineers, product designers and data privacy specialists have been working for over a year to disassemble and interpret privacy regulations in Europe (GDPR), for California (CCPA), Brazil (LGPD) and the many draft privacy regulations that are in review globally, to create infrastructure and elegant abstractions that manage privacy requirements as code that easily integrates with your existing tech stack.

We’re excited to invite our first Beta Developer teams and Pilot Customers to trial two version of our infrastructure and eager to get your collective feedback. We’re confident we already have the most comprehensive technology solution to data privacy but we’ll continue to iterate and improve rapidly in the coming months and years.

With Ethyca, you can trust in data.

– Team Ethyca

A guide to CCPA, aka California Privacy Law
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A guide to CCPA, aka California Privacy Law

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS THE CCPA?

The California Consumer Privacy Act will come into effect on January 1, 2020, and this fact may have a big impact on your business. California is the crown jewel in the United States economy – if it were a standalone country its $2.7 trillion GDP would be the fifth largest in the world, sitting ahead of the United Kingdom. This, combined with the state’s status as an incubator for tech innovation and consumer culture, gives it an outsized importance for all kinds of businesses operating at local, national, and multinational levels.

Put simply, any enterprise that reaches a certain scale will now be forced to contend with the CCPA, and it’s likely other states will soon follow suit with similar legislative pieces of their own- California has long been a bellwether for US-wide tech legislation. This article is a piece-by-piece examination of the CCPA and an analysis of its business impact, with particular attention given to the consequences for Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME)’s data management, systems, and practices. By conclusion it should be clear that the CCPA is nothing to fear for management and development teams that are proactive and thoughtful in adapting to its prescriptions. For those that don’t use the appropriate amount of care, the consequences can be severe.

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GDPR Fully Explained
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GDPR Fully Explained

With the European Union’s passage of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the practice of data regulation moved out of its infancy. The GDPR is the first wide-reaching piece of unified data and privacy policy in the world, and as such, it is set to heavily influence a plethora of policies that are set to follow in its wake. But apart from the occasional headline about FAANG companies tussling with the new legislation, the practical impact of GDPR remains frustratingly obscure. If you’re a stakeholder in a small-to-medium enterprise (SME), this is a big problem. Unlike Google and Facebook, SME’s are unlikely to have a bottomless legal budget to contest being found in violation of the GDPR, and so for them, data compliance over the next five to ten years can easily become a question of business survival. This guide is a starting point for understanding the implications GDPR has for these businesses. We will examine the document, chapter by chapter, to summarize its content and analyze the practical consequences it holds for businesses that want to be compliant. Read on for a primer on all thing GDPR:

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