Federal Trade Commission Enforcing Security Measures

Information security in any organization, regardless of their size, is vital for the success and for the safety of its employees and clients. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued letters to almost a hundred companies, with employee sizes of 8 to over 10,000, asking them to improve their security practices. The FTC found that these companies had at least one computer file that contains private information about customers or employees that had been shared from their organization’s network or their service provider’s network onto a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) network. If these companies do not prevent the sharing of information about employees or customers, they are in violation of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act. The FTC recommends that these companies should identify the employees and customers that have been affected and to consider notifying them.