Out Of The Box- Summer 2014

ARE OFFERS OF FREE CREDIT MONITORING ABOUT TO BECOME MANDATORY IN DATA BREACH INCIDENTS?

By Sam Lunier

Although not legally required to do so, businesses that experience a data breach often provide free credit monitoring or identity theft prevention services to affected consumers. Offering these services can assist potentially affected consumers, help to rebuild a business's relationship with its customers, and may mitigate potential damage to consumers caused by misuse of their personal information. But at the end of the day, it is generally the business's decision whether to incur the costs of these services on top of other breach-related costs. That discretion may be about to disappear. Recent high-profile data breaches have prompted legislators at both the state and federal levels to introduce legislation that would impose a variety of new requirements in the event of a breach. Although these new laws differ in many respects, one emerging trend is the