What is the Ohio Data Protection Act safe harbor?
The Ohio Data Protection Act (Senate Bill 220, effective 2018, codified at Ohio Revised Code Chapter 1354) provides an affirmative defense, commonly called a safe harbor, against tort claims in data breach lawsuits. Businesses qualify by creating, maintaining, and reasonably conforming to a written cybersecurity program based on a recognized framework, with the CIS Controls, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and ISO 27001 among those listed. Documented, continuously verified conformance is the evidence that supports the defense.
The longer answer.
The safe harbor is a litigation defense, not immunity and not a compliance mandate: it gives defendants a recognized legal argument that reasonable security was in place when the breach occurred. The program must be scaled appropriately to the business's size, the sensitivity of the data, and available resources, and it must track updates to the chosen framework.
Because the statute names framework conformance as the qualifying test, the practical question in litigation becomes evidentiary: can you prove the program operated continuously, not just that a policy document existed? Continuous CIS benchmark scanning with retained scan history provides exactly that record for the technical-controls layer of a CIS Controls based program.
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