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Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 was one of the most powerful consumer privacy protection mechanisms to reach the financial services industry.

The privacy provisions contained within the legislation were designed to restrict financial services companies from disclosing their customer’s personal information to third-parties with their consent. Under GLBA, consumers must be given the opportunity to opt-out or choose not to participate in information collection and sharing activities.

The Act consists of three sections:

• Financial Privacy Rule, which regulates the collection and disclosure of private financial information;
• Safeguards Rule, which stipulates that financial institutions must implement security programs to protect such information;
• Pretexting provisions, which prohibit the practice of pretexting (accessing private information using false pretenses).

The Act also requires financial institutions to give customers written privacy notices that explain their information-sharing practices.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Safeguards Rule requires financial institutions to prevent unauthorised access to non-public personal information. Financial institutions must take steps to ensure the security and confidentiality of non-public personal information such as:

• A consumer's name, address, social security number, and account number
• The fact than an individual is a customer of a particular financial institution
• Information a consumer provides on an application
• Information from a "cookie" obtained in using a website
• Credit histories on a consumer report obtained by a financial institution

Complying With Gramm-Leach-Bliley

BII Compliance help financial institutions comply with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act by:

• Protecting non-public personal information wherever it is used or sent
• Automatically identifying and protecting email that contain non-public personal information
• Enforcing content access and usage through enterprise-defined policies so only authorized users can see and use the information
• Providing detailed logs and audit trails of content access and usage in a format that can be easily stored, viewed and imported into other enterprise systems
• Supporting compliance activities without changing the way users work

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