We’ve already seen how new FTC regulations for GLBA-regulated financial institutions require retention schedules and disposal of unnecessary data as essential data security controls. The FTC is now also taking that position for all businesses under Section 5 of the FTC Act, as seen in a slew of recent FTC data security enforcement actions.
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The FTC has updated its data security regulations for the financial institutions it regulates under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). The FTC’s revised requirements for information security programs, effective June 1, 2023, will now mandate data retention policies and disposal of unnecessary customer information.
To appreciate what this means, we must take a quick look at
Data security laws increasingly require disposal of unnecessary data, But will regulators take this seriously?
Continue Reading Less Data #1: State-level data security regulators are enforcing data disposal
Two years ago I made a prediction: “For the 2020s, the dots already connect clearly – the new impetus for managing information retention and disposal will be data privacy and security compliance. Buckle up.”
This was the last line of a 2021 blog series exploring then-recent developments in United States’ data privacy and security
In this series we’ve looked at recent developments in United States’ data privacy and security laws, primarily at the state level, that are transforming retention schedules and data disposal from merely prudent practices into compliance requirements:
This series explores how recent changes in U.S. privacy and data security laws are elevating retention schedules and data disposal from merely prudent practices to compliance requirements.
As mentioned earlier, The FTC enforces privacy and data security beyond its regulatory ambit for sector-specific privacy and security laws such as GLBA, FACTA, and COPPA. It does so under the authority of Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” 15 U.S.C. § 45(a)(1). The FTC’s targeted businesses for Section 5 data security enforcement have ranged from the large and well-known to the small and obscure. But the common theme is that the business, according to the FTC, either deceptively or unfairly engaged in unreasonable and inadequate data security practices for consumers’ personal information (PI).
In several Section 5 enforcement proceedings before 2019 the FTC alleged that the combination of several inadequate data security practices “taken together,” and including retaining consumers’ PI beyond any business need, can collectively be an unfair trade practice under Section 5. Such past FTC data security matters mentioning over-retention include enforcement actions against BJ’s Wholesale Club, Inc., DSW Inc., Life is good, Inc., Ceridian Corporation, and Cbr Systems, Inc.
But in its recent Section 5 enforcement actions against InfoTrax Systems and SkyMed International, the FTC has changed its approach, elevating over-retention to be a core data security failure. In each of these cases, as it had in the past, the FTC alleged multiple data security lapses, including the failure to dispose of PI once “no longer necessary.” Yet the language of these recent complaints no longer uses the “taken together” language of the earlier enforcement actions, allowing over-retention of PI to stand on its own as an unreasonable data security practice. And the consent orders in these cases, unlike the FTC’s earlier enforcement matters, set forth the explicit, independent requirement that the respondents must have policies, procedures, and measures to delete PI once it is no longer necessary.
Continue Reading Less data is more than ever: The FTC and the reasonable data security program
This series explores how recent changes in U.S. privacy and data security laws are elevating retention schedules and data disposal from merely prudent practices to compliance requirements.
As discussed previously in this series, there’s a shift in U.S. data security laws toward requiring data retention scheduling and disposal of unnecessary data. Recent changes in state laws with data security requirements for financial services businesses are an excellent example of this trend.
First, some brief context. The primary driver of financial sector data security has long been the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which requires the regulators of financial institutions to establish safeguards standards for the security and confidentiality of customer data. 15 U.S.C. § 6801(b). The various regulators obliged, with different approaches typical of the idiosyncratic U.S. regulatory ecosystem. The federal banking agencies (FRB, OCC, & FDIC) promulgated the Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards, see 12 C.F.R. Part 30, App. B, with detailed, granular security requirements. The NCUA adopted similarly specific safeguards for credit unions. 12 C.F.R. Part 748, App. A. In contrast, the SEC (Regulation S-P, 17 C.F.R. § 248.30(a)) and the FTC (16 C.F.R. Part 314) took a high-level approach with their respective standards, requiring safeguards reasonably designed to ensure security and confidentiality and to protect against anticipated threats and unauthorized access or use. And for the insurance industry, GLBA security standards were left to state insurance regulators, consistent with federal deference to the state-level regulation of insurance.
The salient point here is that none of the GLBA federal regulators crafted security standards that directly require either data retention scheduling or disposal of customer data once no longer required for legal compliance or business purposes. The SEC and FTC standards are silent on these topics, and the banking agencies’ and NCUA’s standards speak only to the proper means of disposal, not when customer data must be disposed of.
But this is beginning to change. And as seen elsewhere in this series, states are leading the way:
Continue Reading Less data is more than ever: state-level data security laws for the financial services sector
This series explores how recent changes in U.S. privacy and data security laws are elevating retention schedules and data disposal from merely prudent practices to compliance requirements.
It seems like Data Security 101 to say that there cannot be a security breach of data a business no longer retains. Carefully managing data retention and disposal is one of the most potent and effective security safeguards for any business. Yet oddly, U.S. state laws mandating reasonable data security for personally identifiable information (PII) traditionally have not required that PII be disposed of once no longer needed. And state laws requiring secure disposal of records containing PII have commonly focused on how such records must compliantly be disposed of, not when. But recent changes in state-level security program and secure disposal statutes signal a change, with state laws now requiring businesses to dispose of PII when no longer required by retention laws or otherwise needed for business purposes.
State-level Secure Disposal Laws
A majority of the states have statutes requiring businesses with PII of state residents to take reasonable measures to protect such information when it is disposed of or discarded. Most such statutes were enacted in the 2000s and, similar to the federal Disposal Rule under FACTA, specify compliant means for securely disposing of protected information. For examples, Nevada as of 2006 requires secure destruction or records containing customer personal information “when the business decides that it will no longer maintain the records,” and New York in 2006 mandated secure disposal of records containing PII, without any mention of when such records should be disposed of. Nev. Rev. Stat. § 603A.200(1); N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 399-h(2).
But now, such state-level secure disposal statutes have begun to also speak to when such records must be disposed of, tied to legal retention requirements and business need:
Continue Reading Less data is more than ever: state PII data security and disposal laws
This series explores how recent changes in U.S. privacy and data security laws are elevating retention schedules and data disposal from merely prudent practices to compliance requirements.
Today’s companion post explores how the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), without statutory provisions explicitly requiring data minimization or storage limitation, nevertheless incents covered businesses to carefully manage retention and disposal of personal information (PI). But less than two years from now, the script gets flipped, with California mandating both data minimization and storage limitation for businesses covered by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).
The CPRA became law through a November 2020 ballot initiative. Generally effective on January 1, 2023, the CPRA makes sweeping changes to the CCPA, including new provisions that directly require data retention management and data disposal. Under the CPRA, covered businesses:
Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.100(a)(3) & (c) (effective January 1, 2023). Thus, for the first time under any U.S. federal or state comprehensive data privacy law, The CPRA will explicitly and directly require covered businesses (1) to manage the CPRA’s broad range of PI under data retention schedule rules disclosed through notice to consumers, and (2) to dispose of PI once it is no longer required for legal compliance or reasonably necessary for the disclosed purposes for its collection and use.
Continue Reading Less data is more than ever: the CPRA and beyond
This series explores how recent changes in U.S. privacy and data security laws are elevating retention schedules and data disposal from merely prudent practices to compliance requirements.
The California Consumer Privacy Act, effective January 1, 2020, was the United States’ first state-level comprehensive data privacy law. And the CCPA blogging blitzkreig has not been merely hype – the CCPA presages a fundamental shift in U.S. privacy law.
The statute was a bit convoluted in its original form, almost as if the California legislature had hurriedly cobbled it together in a week’s time to avoid different provisions becoming law through a ballot initiative spearheaded by private activists, and which would have been essentially immune to subsequent direct amendment by the legislature (oops, that’s actually what happened). Today’s CCPA is the also the product of a flurry of legislative clean-up amendments, supplemented by now-final California regulations (not that anything is ever quite final in California), and with a few targeted statutory amendments effective now due to last November’s adoption of the CPRA by ballot referendum.
Much thoughtful guidance is available elsewhere on the CCPA’s scope, applicability, and the various consumer rights it creates, including notice/transparency, access, deletion, and sale opt-out. Our narrow focus here is on whether and how the CCPA affects the need of covered businesses (1) to manage PI with retention scheduling and (2) to dispose of PI once no longer necessary.Continue Reading Less data is more than ever: the CCPA