Mississippi's Data Protection Law: A Comprehensive Overview

Data has always been important for businesses globally. In fact, it has become increasingly more significant due to the advancements in Artificial Intelligence, especially Generative AI (GenAI). Businesses are now leveraging vast volumes of data to train their GenAI pipelines or fine-tune their AI-powered applications.

However, the datasets used to train GenAI or leveraged for strategic business decision-making may contain sensitive personal data. If proper security, governance, and compliance controls aren’t placed around these datasets, it would lead to critical security breaches. Here, data protection laws and AI regulations come into the picture.

States across the US are working tirelessly to propose or implement regulations to enable safe and responsible use of data and AI. However, there are still many states in the country that have yet to propose and establish any comprehensive state-wide data protection law. Amongst such states that have no state privacy law is Mississippi.

In this guide, we will discuss Mississippi's data privacy landscape and what businesses must do to stay compliant and ensure responsible use of personal information (PI).

Understanding Mississippi's Data Privacy Regulations Landscape

As mentioned earlier, Mississippi doesn’t have any state-specific comprehensive privacy law. However, businesses shouldn’t overlook the best data privacy and security practices because there are other regulations that are equally significant. Take, for instance, the security breach notification guidelines that are specific to the state of Mississippi. Let’s take a quick look at some of the important provisions or guidelines of the regulation.

Mississippi Security Breach Notification Law

The law applies to every business operating in the state of Mississippi that, in its routine course of business, collects, maintains, or processes the personal information of the state's residents. The law defines a security breach as any unauthorized access to business files, applications, or documents that contain the personal information of a Mississippi resident while access to the PI wasn’t protected using encryption or similar security measures that could render access to the sensitive information unreadable or unusable.

The law requires that individuals or entities conducting business in Mississippi must notify the affected individuals about the security breach. However, if the controller determines, after a careful review or investigation of the breach, that the breach will not likely do any harm to the individuals, no notification would be required. In the case of a third party, the third party that maintains the PI of an individual must inform the controller regarding the breach if they have reasons to believe that an unauthorized individual has acquired the PI.

The entity must provide the notice without undue delay. The notification timing may be subject to the investigation conducted by the entity to evaluate and determine the scope and nature of the breach and to identify the impacted identities. Notification provided to the concerned parties can be in the form of written notice, telephonic communication, or electronic means.

The entity may consider a substitute notice if it believes that the notification cost would exceed $5,000 or the entity has to notify more than 5,000 individuals or the entity doesn’t have sufficient contact information. In such an event, the entity may send email notifications to the concerned parties, display a notice on its website, or send the notification via state-wide media.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

The HIPAA regulation is designed to set strict measures and standards for protecting protected health information (PHI). The regulation applies to entities that manage patients’ health information, such as medical services and healthcare providers. The regulation restricts the use and disclosure of sensitive health information and grants patients privacy rights. For instance, patients can request the right to obtain a copy of their data, the right to examine, and the right to make necessary corrections.

The regulation requires HIPAA-covered entities to implement strict administrative, technical, and organizational security measures. Covered entities must ensure the integrity and confidentiality of patient health data by safeguarding it against reasonably anticipated cyber threats. However, in the event of a security breach, covered entities must notify impacted individuals and concerned authorities without undue delay.

Final Thoughts

Businesses must streamline their data management and privacy practices to stay compliant with federal laws and industry standards. To begin with, businesses must ensure a simple and effortless way for data subjects to file their requests. Updated privacy notices should be present on websites at all times. Businesses should further enable robust security frameworks to prevent any unauthorized access to covered data.