New Mexico And Its New Data Breach Notification Law

We are almost to a point where all 50 states and the District of Columbia will have some form of data breach notification law on their books to protect residents' personally identifying information (PII) in the event of a data breach. The three holdout states are Alabama, New Mexico and South Dakota. But that's about to change in New Mexico. The state legislature recently passed the Data Breach Notification Act (H.B. 15) and the legislation is awaiting Governor Susana Martinez's signature.

Some highlights of the legislation:

• A "security breach" is defined as the "unauthorized acquisition of unencrypted computerized data, or of encrypted computerized data and the confidential process or key used to decrypt the encrypted computerized data, that compromises the security, confidentiality or integrity of personal identifying information maintained by a person."