Practice Areas & Industries: Bracewell & Giuliani LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

We help banks and financial institutions secure — and respond to breaches of — their most valuable information asset: customer data. As public concerns over personal-data privacy and identity theft have grown, state and federal legislatures, government regulators and administrative agencies have responded in turn. Virtually every state has enacted data-privacy and notification laws, and a number of federal laws and regulations have addressed the issue both directly (including the Safeguards Rule of the Federal Trade Commission) and as part of broader legislation (including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act).

Our attorneys work with clients to identify threats and potential security weaknesses, and to implement effective procedures and systems that ensure compliance with applicable state and federal data security guidelines. When breaches do occur, we help financial institutions provide required customer notifications that maintain consumer confidence while preventing the delivery of information that could create additional and unforeseen risks. We help clients cooperate with investigators and law enforcement officials from the FTC, SEC, FDIC and the Department of Justice, and provide litigation counsel in individual and class-action lawsuits related to identity and data theft.