The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Risk Assessment - How to

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 is also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act. It is intended to protect consumers and customers who obtain "financial products or services to be used primarily for personal or other household purposes". The Risk assessment is an important element of GLBA and the Federal Trade Commission has identified four areas that must be addressed:

(1) Information Systems,
(2) Employee Management and Training,
(3) Managing System Failures and
(4) Service Providers.

The identification of risk is necessarily as ongoing process as new technologies are implemented. A mechanism for the continued identification of these risks is coordinated by the designated program coordinator(s).

Risk assessment consists in an objective evaluation of risk in which assumptions and uncertainties are clearly considered and presented. Part of the difficulty of risk management is that measurement of both of the quantities in which risk assessment is concerned - potential loss and probability of occurrence - can be very difficult to measure. The chance of error in the measurement of these two concepts is large. A risk with a large potential loss and a low probability of occurring is often treated differently from one with a low potential loss and a high likelihood of occurring. In theory, both are of nearly equal priority in dealing with first, but in practice it can be very difficult to manage when faced with the scarcity of resources, especially time, in which to conduct the risk management process.