Commercially Reasonable Efforts

A legal standard requiring a party to take actions that are reasonable from a business perspective—balancing effectiveness against cost, effort, and practicality—but not requiring unlimited resources or extreme measures. In privacy contexts, commercially reasonable efforts appear in obligations like securing personal data, verifying consumer identities, preventing unauthorized access, and responding to data subject requests. The standard is flexible and context-dependent: what's commercially reasonable for a Fortune 500 company differs from what's reasonable for a small startup. Courts and regulators consider factors like industry standards, company resources, data sensitivity, risk levels, and available technologies. Organizations should document their rationale for security measures and other practices as demonstrating commercially reasonable efforts. This standard balances privacy protection with practical business constraints—you must take reasonable steps, but you're not expected to take impossible or economically prohibitive actions.