The law, which went into effect March 1, states that all companies that maintain personal information on Massachusetts citizens must conduct an internal security review, have a documented Information Security program (ISP), and set up clear security policies.

If your firm holds personal information (such as Social Security numbers) on any Massachusetts residents, you are required to follow its guidelines, the Boston Herald reports.

Non-compliance could result in fines and lawsuits, as well as bans from doing business with state citizens. The law requires businesses and organizations to:

• designate an information security officer
• develop plans for securing servers, hard disks and laptops
• set up procedures for safe destruction of older data, whether digital or on paper
• train personnel in data security, and
• implement methods for dealing with terminated employees, including cutoff of access to company data.

Now we suspect that this law will be challenged as being a restriction to interstate trade. But that’s hardly a sure thing. And other states are looking at similar regulations. Eventually, this may force the hand of the federal government to set up nationwide security standards.

As one expert notes, the Massachusetts law “is just the beginning of a nationwide movement towards demanding that companies be more proactive in avoiding security breaches that could be devastating to their businesses and their clients.”

The new law seeks to reduce paper use, recycle more paper and buy more recycled paper. We expect that such standards will be adopted nationwide.

The purpose of the new law is to:

• Reduce the use of paper for copying and printing by at least 30%
• Buy 100% recycled content paper for office use.
• Recycle 100% of office paper in all buildings with 25 employees or more.
• Buy and lease only printers and copiers that can run 100% recycled paper
• Give priority to purchasing from companies that produce paper in mills powered by a renewable energy source.

State estimates are that these moves will save the state $1 million a year, plus reduce solid waste and cut down on water pollution and greenhouse gases in paper manufacturing. This move adds on to the state government’s already strong recycling program, with around 90% of all paper used in the state capitol being currently recycled.

This move, likely to be followed by both public and private sectors, will have a big impact on vendors, both the paper companies (who will be under pressure to build sustainable mills) and the printer/copier manufacturers (who will need to build more machines that handled recycled paper without jamming).

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