The European Parliament and Commission has issued a ruling that will require telecommunications companies to inform affected individuals of data breaches, reports SC Magazine.

The Commission has already approved the amendments. However, those amendments do not extend notification duties to non-telecommunications companies. Steve Moyle, co-founder and CTO at Secerno, explains:

We fully expect data protection measures to extend to different business types and industries, but these extensions should be done in a measured, controlled manner. The very worst thing that the EU could do is impose broad, blanket data protection measures that would affect all industries immediately.

In the United States, the Senate Judiciary Committee recently OK'd the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2009, which contains a breach-notification standard. It would require companies to follow specific rules for protecting sensitive and personally identifiable data.