Impact of U.S. Federal and State Compliance Laws
ABS Financial Solutions, a financial service provider for credit unions across the globe, has found it difficult to meet regulatory compliance laws for proper encryption while still enabling their field representatives to work at maximum efficiency. The field representatives rely on Notebook PCs to access email accounts and financial service applications while mobile. These Notebooks deal with sensitive customer information and require enterprise-strength encryption that is also available for use on other mobile devices.
U.S. Compliance Laws such as Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2, which sets standards for cryptographic modules to protect a system, affects the given problem by requiring ABS to provide an encryption solution that can be easily implemented and managed. Due to the field representative’s dependency on being readily available to customers, solutions that did not meet ABS needs would cause declines in productivity. On the other hand, solutions that did not also meet the standards set by FIPS could make customer information vulnerable to malicious activity and could ultimately cause loss of integrity and damage customer relations.
The ABS solution to the problem was to use a FIPS validated encryption product, ABS-TXR Mobility Guardian. This product met all compliance regulations along with also meeting the company’s request for low user impact and easy implementation and maintenance. Compliance laws influenced the decision to go with this encryption solution above any other possible options due to the product’s ability to not only support field representative efficiency , but also because of its verification through the NIST compliance guidelines. This verification assures the company and customers alike that stored and processed data is being protected adequately.
When deciding upon solutions for business security issues, it is also important that cost-benefit is considered. In the case of ABS Financial Solutions, the cost of the product required for proper encryption was outweighed by the need for protection against malicious user activity on the systems which could create high risks with significant costs to the company. Without this verified protection, confidential customer and company information alike could be lost or leaked, resulting in time-consuming and costly recovery methods.
Lastly, the role of the customer is also critical when developing and implementing a new solution. By understanding the needs of a customer, solutions can be found that are suitable to the level of security that a customer feels sufficient. Customers are more likely to do business with a company when they are assured that their information will remain private. Accepting privacy policies and agreements becomes easier and less intimidating to these customers as well. In addition to privacy, ABS relied upon customer opinion on the availability of their field representatives. Through understanding how important field rep mobility was, ABS could better develop their own requirements for the system that could allow the reps to meet customer needs.

References
FIPS 140-2 Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2015, from http://www.rycombe.com/short140.htm