North Dakota Insurance Head to Chair National Cybersecurity Task Force

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) announced that North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm has been selected to chair a new task force on cybersecurity.

“I am honored to have been chosen by my fellow commissioners to chair this very important task force,” Hamm said. “As the recent cyber attacks on Target, Home Depot and Sony have made clear, the risks to consumers and businesses are increasing by the day.”

The task force will focus its efforts in 2015 on making recommendations and coordinating state efforts regarding the protection of consumer information collected by insurers; the protection of information housed in insurance departments and the NAIC; and collecting information on cyber-liability policies being issued in the market.

Hamm continued, “As insurance regulators, we will work to do everything we can to make sure that consumers are protected.”

Commissioner Hamm has also been selected by his colleagues to be the state insurance commissioner representative on America’s Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee (FBIIC).

FBIIC is chartered under the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. FBIIC’s mission is to work with appropriate members of financial institution regulatory agencies and coordinate efforts to improve the reliability and security of financial information infrastructure.

In fulfilling its mission, FBIIC will:

• Identify critical infrastructure assets, their locations, potential vulnerabilities, and prioritize their importance to the financial system of the U.S.;
• Establish secure communications capability among the financial regulators and protocols for communicating during an emergency; and
• Ensure sufficient staff at each member agency with appropriate security clearances to handle classified information and to coordinate in the event of an emergency.

Source: North Dakota Insurance Commissioner