Blog Posts Tagged with Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

Some things you’d expect to find in a trash can:  last night’s potato peelings, the casserole that looked so promising in the cookbook photo, and Oscar the Grouch.  But if you run a business, the one thing you don’t want in the dumpster behind your office is paperwork containing sensitive information about your customers.  Just ask PLS Financial Services, PLS Group, and the Payday Loan Store of Illinois.

If you haven’t already, hover up to your toolbar and bookmark the FTC’s Regulatory Review page.  It’s your one-stop resource for what's coming up and what’s going down with Commission rules and guides of interest to your business and your clients.  Recent announcements about the FTC's regulatory review schedule make it a must-read.

Is your briefcase feeling lighter? That’s because your dog-eared copy of Volume 16 of the Code of Federal Regulations (where most FTC rules and guides live) is decidedly thinner these days. For the past two decades, the agency has undertaken a systematic review of its rules and guides to make sure they’re up to date, effective, and not overly burdensome. As each rule comes up for review, we ask ourselves — and you — four questions:

You’ve seen the sentence when the FTC announces that it’s thinking about putting a new rule in place or changing what’s already on the books: “Interested parties are invited to submit comments. . . .”.  The alphabet soup of the administrative process can be a bit daunting at first: ANPR (Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking), FRN (Federal Register Notice), CFR (Code of Federal Regulations), SBP (Statement of Basis and Purpose). When it comes to the rulemaking process at the FTC, here are six common myths — and the straight scoop.

Consumers have found their voice.  And last year they raised it more than 1.3 million times to complain about identity theft, fraud, and products that didn’t live up to the advertising hype.

Of course, no legitimate business would put out a welcome mat for crooks.  But as the FTC’s data security cases make clear, that’s the effect when companies fail to take reasonable steps to secure sensitive information in their possession — or data they allow others to access.  Three recent settlements with companies that resell credit reports illustrate that point.

If your company keeps sensitive data like Social Security numbers, credit reports, account numbers, health records, or business secrets, you’ve probably instituted safeguards to protect that information, whether it’s stored in computers or on paper. That’s great.  But it’s time to take those safeguards a step further.