With heightened awareness of the value and vulnerability of personal and financial information collected by businesses and governments, more states are enacting legislation to require consumer notification when there are security breaches involving this information. In 2006, 35 states and the District of Columbia introduced legislation addressing security breach notification. The latest legislation - Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and Vermont - became effective in January 2007.

See this Mintz Levin Alert for a brief summary of the newly effective laws.