What is GLBA? Regulations and Requirements
How Does GLBA Compliance Work?
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) requires financial institutions – companies that offer consumers financial products or services like loans, financial or investment advice, or insurance – to explain their information-sharing practices to their customers and to safeguard sensitive data.
The GLBA serves the purpose of protecting the confidentiality and safekeeping of customers’ private personal information. This can include social security numbers, credit reports, income data, credit, and bank card account numbers, phone numbers, addresses, and any other received private customer information. The Safeguards Rule requires financial institutions to create a written information security plan detailing how the institution plans to protect their customers’ information. According to the Safeguards Rule, covered financial institutions are required to:
- Assign at least one employee to manage an information security program
- Detect any risks to customer information that is used in the company’s operations and evaluate the effectiveness of the existing measures to mitigate these risks
- Design, integrate, and consistently monitor and update a safeguards program
- Hire secure service providers that will maintain your safeguards and make sure your institution monitors how they handle your customer’s information
- In order to improve GLBA compliance, the Safeguards Rule requires employee management and training programs to be included in the information security plan
Added Benefits of GLBA Compliance
GLBA compliance helps reduce the risk for financial institutions by decreasing the chance of financial or reputational damage caused by breached private customer data. The GLBA Safeguards Rule provides some benefits to customers including:
- Private information needs to be protected against unauthorized access
- If private information is shared, customers must be notified and have the ability to block their private information from being shared
- Customer data activity must be tracked, including any attempts to access protected information
Compliance with the GLBA improves an institution's reputation by implementing these standards to help protect consumer and customer records. Customers can feel secure that their information is safeguarded by the institution thus improving customer loyalty and increasing the number of repeat business.
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