DMA Urges Marketers to Safeguard Personal Data in Their Care

April 14, 2011 — DMA has sent a letter from its Senior Vice President of Corporate & Social Responsibility Senny Boone, advising marketers to safeguard the personal data in their care, and inviting feedback.

The full text of the letter appears below:

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Dear Members:

Safeguarding the personal data in your care is an important responsibility of a marketer.

As you may be aware, the issue of an email data breach has been a hot topic recently for our community. Hackers may pinpoint a company and attempt to access the consumer data it retains to commit fraud. This has occurred at very large companies, small companies, organizations and government agencies—no one is immune from such criminal activity.

When data breach occurs, it is a very serious matter for the direct marketing community as a whole to prevent further encroachment. The direct marketing community through professional privacy and security personnel has been especially sensitive and proactive in ensuring the data kept is protected. Data security is a must-do for the direct marketing community and critically important in building consumer trust in the marketing process.

The recent media reports provide us with an opportunity to remind you of key points that you should include in your planning against a data breach. We invite you to provide us with additional feedback at ethics@the-dma.org or government@the-dma.org, or you may call me at 202.861.2498.

The DMA has worked with the FTC in the past to shape guidance on the development of a plan, but you also will need to work with your entire team and also ensure your legal counsel is involved. To review the full checklist, please go to www.dmaresponsibility.org/InfoSecurity/

You may also go to http://www.ftc.gov/infosecurity

Key highlights:

Make sure you have a written security policy to establish information security policies and practices to ensure the security of your systems.

Train and Supervise for Security—do you know your security team? Make sure this includes oversight of any third parties and contractors working on your behalf.

Use available technology to guard personal data—a plan is just the start, there are plentiful resources that allow you to construct structural and technological walls and allow you to run test drills.

Inform Data Suppliers and Business Partners of their Responsibilities to meet your security specifications. Make sure the personal data in your care are tagged and fenced while in storage and once they leave. Do not allow information security transfers without informing business partners to meet your security needs.

Please also ensure you abide by the DMA’s Guidelines at www.dmaresponsibility.org/Guidelines/ Article # 37 among other key requirements, and make sure you check legal requirements with your counsel for both data retention as well as steps you may need to take if there is a potential data breach.

We appreciate your immediate attention to this critically important issue for the marketing community which is so often on the front lines to ensure the security of data and I invite your comments and feedback on additional planning tools.

Sincerely,

Senny Boone, Esq.

SVP Corporate & Social Responsibility