Cybersecurity compliance for regulated firms in Missouri

Three parts

What a complete answer covers in Missouri

In Missouri, 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 Missouri. 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 Missouri mortgage licensing is overseen by the Missouri Division of Finance (Department of Commerce and Insurance). Missouri covers servicing under a single license. No company may engage in brokering, funding, servicing or purchasing residential mortgage loans without a residential mortgage loan broker license from the Division of Finance (Mo. Rev. Stat. §443.805), listed in NMLS as the Missouri Mortgage Company License, unless the company is an exempt person under §443.703 or engages solely in commercial mortgage lending. Other licenses are overseen by other regulators and carry conditions of their own.
• What Missouri law requires after a breach. Missouri's breach-notification law (Mo. Rev. Stat. §407.1500) sets out what must happen, and how quickly, when residents' personal information is exposed.
• 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 Missouri: If a Missouri incident is closed without notification because there is no risk of identity theft, §407.1500 requires that determination to be made in writing and kept for five years. When a breach notice goes to more than 1,000 consumers at one time, the Attorney General and the nationwide credit bureaus must also be notified.

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.