Pennsylvania governor indicators insurance coverage knowledge safety act

Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has signed into legislation a invoice designed to safeguard the insurance coverage business from cyber threats.

Pennsylvania Insurance Data Security Act, often known as House Bill 739, was signed final week as Act 2 of 2023 after it handed each the Pennsylvania House and Senate with unanimous, bipartisan assist.

Under the brand new legislation, insurance coverage licensees, together with corporations and people (with sure exceptions for small companies), are actually required to carry out thorough threat assessments to establish potential cyber threats and decide the chance and potential injury related to these threats.

All licensees should additionally develop a complete info safety program geared toward mitigating dangers, stopping cyber incidents, and establishing response plans for recovering from cybersecurity occasions.

Furthermore, licensees are actually obligated to inform the insurance coverage commissioner inside 5 enterprise days in the event that they uncover a cybersecurity occasion involving personal info.

“Governor Shapiro will always stand for the best interests of Pennsylvania’s insurance consumers and has prioritized ensuring that the industry is effective and working for Pennsylvanians,” mentioned performing insurance coverage commissioner Michael Humphreys.

“This collaborative effort was focused on improving business processes and insurance regulatory tools to best safeguard our citizens’ personal information. The new bipartisan law makes Pennsylvania the largest state to enact these critical reforms and will make the industry more responsive and better prepared for cybersecurity events and cybercrime.”

Citing a cybercrime report from the FBI, the division underscored the significance of the brand new legislation, contemplating the next statistics:

• In 2022 alone, Americans suffered losses exceeding $10.3 billion on account of cybercrime, representing a 49% enhance in comparison with the earlier yr.
• The FBI obtained over 800,000 complaints associated to cybercrime throughout the identical interval.
• Pennsylvania witnessed the next variety of reported cybercrime victims in comparison with the mixed figures of Canada, India, Australia, France, and South Africa.

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