Legislation Requires Security Measures to Protect Personal Information by May 1
NEW YORK, April 8, 2009 — Identity Finder, LLC (http://www.identityfinder.com), a leading software innovator in security and privacy technologies, announced today an affordable component to assist organizations in addressing Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00 legislation aimed at stemming the growth of identity theft caused by data breaches.
The recent legislation applies to all persons that own, license, store or maintain personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth and requires that special security measures be enacted. Identity Finder CEO Todd Feinman explains here the impact of the legislation to businesses with Massachusetts customers and the knowledge they need to achieve compliance, which is required by May 1, 2009.
Due to increased regulatory requirements, organizations must now proactively protect their employee and customer data. Massachusetts consumers must be notified of any breach of their personal information that creates a substantial risk of identity theft or fraud. "The costs associated with a data breach, from reputational risk to offering credit monitoring, can be very high and are much greater than the cost of simple, proactive measures," says Feinman. "Firewalls and anti-virus software can be a start, but the new legislation specifically addresses personal information and talks about being more proactive to protect confidential data."
Feinman's company, Identity Finder, has software that finds personally identifiable information (PII) stored in computers, the type of sensitive data specifically referred to by the CMR 17 legislation. Adds Feinman, "If you don't need it, find the problem at the source and get rid of it, before it ever becomes an issue." His firm has spent years developing search techniques and intelligence to automatically find social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank accounts, and other private data within files, emails, databases, and system areas. Once found, the software makes it simple for users to permanently shred, scrub, or secure the information. Their recently released reporting console aggregates all the information and provides a report card for organizations to see how their policies are performing.
Many Massachusetts organizations such as MIT are now cleaning unnecessary PII from computers using Identity Finder. Allison Dolan, Program Director for Protecting PII at MIT, shared in her presentation at a recent privacy conference that for many office environments, "it is much easier to find and get rid of the data instead of worrying about it …." Dolan suggests using Identity Finder to clean old files that have been lurking and forgotten about.
One of many leading organizations to review the software, PC Magazine, wrote, "In a perfect world your security suite would prevent an identity-stealing Trojan or spyware program from ever running on your computer. But if such an attacker should get past your defenses, Identity Finder ensures that it won't find personal information to steal."
Unlike many products that require an IT department to implement and manage a centralized system, Identity Finder can be run out of the box, on a PC (or Mac) by the owner of the data, who is most likely able to recognize whether the information can be destroyed or should be secured. For this reason, Identity Finder is an ideal fit for small businesses as well as distributed organizations who want to minimize their risks under the new law.
About:
Identity Finder, LLC was founded in 2001 by innovative security experts. The company, headquartered in New York City, has grown to become a leader in data leakage and identity theft prevention by helping millions of consumers, small businesses, and enterprises in fifty countries.
Contact:
http://www.identityfinder.com
Fern Edison: Email or (845) 679-6319
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