Cybersecurity compliance for regulated firms in Oregon

Three parts

What a complete answer covers in Oregon

In Oregon, 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 Oregon. 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 Oregon mortgage licensing is overseen by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, Division of Financial Regulation. Companies that service Oregon residential mortgage loans need a Mortgage Loan Servicer license from the Division of Financial Regulation, applied for through NMLS, under Oregon's mortgage loan servicer licensing law (ORS 86A.300–86A.339, enacted as Senate Bill 98 and effective January 1, 2018). Other licenses are overseen by other regulators and carry conditions of their own.
• What Oregon law says about protecting data. Oregon requires any business that owns or maintains Oregonians' personal information to develop, implement and maintain reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards. The statute sets out specific elements, from a designated security coordinator to secure disposal (ORS 646A.622).
• 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 Oregon: Oregon's Consumer Privacy Act exempts banks and credit unions as entities, but not nonbank mortgage lenders or servicers. For those firms only GLBA-covered data is exempt, so marketing and operational data can bring a mortgage company within the full privacy law while bank competitors remain outside it.

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.