Vishnu Shankar has joined Morgan Lewis as a partner resident in London. He most recently served as the Head of Legal (Regulatory Enforcement) at the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the United Kingdom’s lead privacy and cybersecurity regulator, as per a statement from the company.
In his return to private practice, Shankar will represent clients in advisory, regulatory enforcement, litigation and crisis management matters involving EU and UK data protection, privacy, cybersecurity, international data transfers, Artificial Intelligence (AI), children’s online privacy and other digital and technology regulatory laws across a range of industries, including financial services, technology, retail and e-commerce, asset management and private equity, payments and fintech, sports and entertainment, lifesciences and pharmaceuticals and transportation. He is also active in representing clients in India and South Asia, added the statement.
At the ICO, Shankar worked closely with colleagues in the legal service, regulatory supervision service (including investigations – civil, cyber and PDMIT and cybersecurity regulation directorates), and information access departments as well as other senior stakeholders to help advance the regulator’s priorities, added the statement.
Prior to joining the ICO, Shankar spent more than a decade in private practice, including as a partner, in London, New York and Dublin, focussing on technology, data privacy and cybersecurity law as well as intellectual property transactional matters. He also helped clients remediate high-stakes multi-jurisdictional cybersecurity breaches and defended clients in complex GDPR enforcement matters, including those involving Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies, the statement concluded.
