Can AI agents be deployed for enhanced protection? What is a “triple extortion”? How is ransomware evolving? Is there hope for SMEs?

Sam Kaplan is a policy, legal, and national security professional with over eighteen years of experience across the public and private sectors. He is currently the Assistant General Counsel for Public Policy & Government Affairs at Palo Alto Networks, providing legal guidance on domestic and international legislative, regulatory, and policy matters, with a focus on cybersecurity, AI governance, privacy, data security, international data flows, and public-private capacity building.

Before Palo Alto Networks, Sam led the global product policy team for Facebook’s News Feed and News Tab at Meta Platforms, addressing issues like AI/ML fairness, algorithmic transparency, platform integrity, election security, misinformation, and harmful content.

Prior to his private sector roles, Sam spent over thirteen years in the Federal Government. He held senior leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including Assistant Secretary for Cyber, Infrastructure, Risk and Resilience Policy and Chief Privacy Officer. Earlier government roles included work at the U.S. Department of Justice (Office of Legal Policy, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia) and as Counselor to a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, focusing on the U.S. Intelligence Community.

References:

* Sam Kaplan on LinkedIn

* Palo Alto Networks

* Unit 42 Research (Palo Alto Networks)

* Cyber Information Sharing and Collaboration Program (CISCP) at CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)

In this live recording (January 14th 2026), we have conducted a comparative law exercise (US/EU) regarding ePrivacy compliance through Universal Opt-Out signals.

Alan Chapell is the President of Chapell & Associates, a law firm serving media and AdTech. He is outside counsel and CPO to several of the leading advertising and technology companies. He regularly publishes both The Chapell Report and The Monopoly Report.

References:

* Alan Chapell on LinkedIn

* The Chapell Report

* The Monopoly Report

* IEEE P 7012 (MyTerms)

* Alan Chapell: The many struggles of Google’s Privacy Sandbox, and how to deploy it in compliance with EU and US privacy laws (Masters of Privacy, May 2024)

* Can the GPC standard eliminate consent banners in the EU? (Sebastian Zimmeck, Harshvardhan J. Pandit, Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, Cristiana Teixeira Santos, Konrad Kollnig, Robin Berjon)

* The slippery slope of consent banners in preventing CIPA and VPPA claims: why effective Opt-Outs will prevail - also in the EU (Sergio Maldonado).

It is time for a seasonal update at the intersection of Marketing, Data, Privacy and Technology. We will stick to our usual five blocks: ePrivacy & regulatory updates; MarTech & AdTech; AI, Competition and Digital Markets; PETs, Zero-Party Data and Customer Centricity; Future of Media.

This season’s update includes:

* CJEU Russmedia decision (“mere conduit” safe harbour overridden by a marketplace’s role as a data controller)

* EU/UK DPA fines (LastPass-ICO, Infobel-APDB, AMEX-CNIL, AENA-AEPD)

* California: Public enforcement (by both the AG -JamCity, SlingTV- and the CPPA) and status of CIPA lawsuits

* Texas’ AG vs. TV manufacturers

* New legislation: EU Digital Omnibus, California’s spree, US Executive Order on AI

* Most recent adventures and daring moves of Meta, OpenAI, Google, Apple and X in the face of MarTech/AdTech constraints, market dynamics, antitrust actions and other enforcement initiatives.

(Our referenced monographic episode on CIPA/VPPA litigation is available here.)

All references and links can be found in a separate blog post available to Masters of Privacy Connect subscribers on our website’s Newsroom section (Newsroom Notes: Fall 2025).

Our usual disclaimer: the voice that joins Sergio today is a text-to-speech output generated with Eleven Labs.

Happy Holidays to all of you :)