"The challenge for business is to provide customers with services in real-time, on demand and in a reliable and secure fashion. The legal platform supporting these data transactions should have both strong human rights and economic rights to the free flow of information.

"Data protection and data accuracy is as essential to consumer security and fraud protection as it is to financial risk management for business operators."

Data privacy is a high-profile topic right now across the globe.

But advocacy groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have long called for comprehensive legislation to protect personal privacy, including rules for organizations handling personal data and limits on government surveillance.

CDT director, Leslie Harris, predicts cybersecurity vendors and other tech companies to renew calls for data breach legislation in 2007.