Cybersecurity compliance for regulated firms in Alaska

Three parts

What a complete answer covers in Alaska

In Alaska, different licenses are overseen by different regulators. Where a rule below applies to one kind of firm, the text says so.

• The federal minimum. The FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR 314) treats a wide range of nonbank businesses as financial institutions, including mortgage lenders and servicers, consumer finance companies, tax preparers, collection firms, title and settlement agents, money services businesses, and dealers that arrange financing. A firm within its reach must keep a written security program, appoint a qualified individual to run it, and report to its board each year. Insurance producers and investment advisers fall outside the FTC's jurisdiction and answer to their own regulators, and banks and credit unions answer to their prudential regulators under the interagency information-security guidelines. Which side of that line a firm falls on depends on what it does and who supervises it.
• What a license adds in Alaska. Conditions attach to whatever a firm is licensed or registered to do, and they differ widely from one type of license to another. Mortgage is the area where most of our work lies, and in Alaska mortgage licensing is overseen by the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development, Division of Banking and Securities. Alaska has no mortgage-servicer license. The state's SAFE mortgage licensing law (Alaska Stat. ch. 06.60) requires licensing through NMLS to operate as a mortgage lender, mortgage broker or mortgage loan originator, and its definitions turn on funding and arranging loans rather than collecting on them. Servicers that also lend on or acquire Alaska loans typically hold the state's Mortgage Broker/Lender License. Other licenses are overseen by other regulators and carry conditions of their own.
• What Alaska law says about protecting data. Alaska imposes no general reasonable-safeguards mandate on businesses, but the Personal Information Protection Act requires taking all reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to or use of records containing personal information when those records are discarded (Alaska Stat. §45.48.500).
• Your counterparties' requirements. Investors, warehouse lenders, carriers, underwriters and institutional clients send questionnaires of their own, and their reviews decide whether a relationship continues. Add the laws of each state where your customers live, and that is the list a firm has to answer. Our assessment begins by producing it, matched to your firm and with each source cited.

Also relevant in Alaska: In Alaska, even a decision not to notify involves the regulator. A business may forgo customer notification only if, after an appropriate investigation and written notification to the Attorney General, it determines that the breach poses no reasonable likelihood of harm to consumers.

General information, not legal advice. Which of these requirements reach your firm depends on its circumstances. The assessment answers that question and names the source of each finding.