Cybersecurity compliance for regulated firms in Florida

Three parts

What a complete answer covers in Florida

In Florida, 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 Florida. 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 Florida mortgage licensing is overseen by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation. Companies that service Florida mortgage loans are licensed by the Office of Financial Regulation's Division of Consumer Finance under Chapter 494, Florida Statutes, which includes a dedicated Mortgage Lender Servicer license type. Other licenses are overseen by other regulators and carry conditions of their own.
• What Florida law says about protecting data. Beyond breach notification, the Florida Information Protection Act requires every covered business to take reasonable measures to protect and secure personal information it holds in electronic form (Fla. Stat. §501.171(2)).
• 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 Florida: A security incident in Florida can involve two state authorities at once. The Attorney General's office enforces the breach-notification law as an unfair or deceptive trade practice, while the Office of Financial Regulation conducts its own compliance examinations of consumer-finance licensees.

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.