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First Federal Data Breach Notification Bill Passed by Congress

HR 2221 Sets Up FTC as Go To Enforcement Agency
HR 2221 Sets Up FTC as Go To Enforcement Agency
HR 2221 Sets Up FTC as Go To Enforcement Agency

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

  • Updates on New and Pending Legislation.
  • Comparison of hard drive erasure methods
  • NIST special publication 800-88 media sanitization guidelines
 While dozens of states at this point have passed aggressive data security legislation, the Feds have been dragging their heels up until now. However, with House passage of H.R. 2221 on December 11, it appears the Federal Government is well on the way to taking much more serious oversight over care and custody of private information. Although previous bills have repeatedly died in committee, the Data Accountability and Trust Act (DATA) made it to the floor and cleared by a voice vote.

This bill is similar to most of the related state bills cover data breach notification, but tasks the FTC with defining technical procedures with protecting data. More specifically, the DATA bill requires organizations to establish a data security policy, identify an information security officer and create a process for securely destroying data that is no longer required (end of data life).

Two related pieces of legislation passed out of Senate committees in November: the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2009 and the Data Breach Notification Act have both cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Although few House bills pass through the Senate unchanged, little opposition is expected for Senate passage of the DATA act. For more details and commentary on H.R. 2221, please click here.