On-Site Document Shredding & GLB Act

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act) also addresses privacy issues. This legislation went into effect in November of 2000 and will be enforced beginning this summer. The privacy provisions in the law require that financial institutions and insurance companies give consumers prior notice of an intention to share personal information and a chance to opt out of the sharing of such information. The language in this law is general and addresses issues regarding consumer notification. The broad standards outlined in this law were designed to compel financial institutions to “respect the privacy of its customers and to protect the security and confidentiality of those customers’ non-public personal information.”

This language suggests that paper documents containing such personal information should also be protected and safely destroyed. However, there is neither a prescribed procedure nor a recommendation regarding paper records in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

NAID hopes that members will use their marketing genius to provide customers and prospects with the tools with which they can come to the conclusion that secure destruction of documents via shredding is the most cost-effective method to assure their compliance with the security requirements of both HIPAA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley.

Source: http://www.naidonline.org/news.html 15 May 02

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