The Board Can Enhance Its Procedures and Controls for Protecting Confidential Information in Supervision Central

While supervising and examining banking organizations, Reserve Banks collect sensitive, nonpublic information, including personally identifiable information. The loss or misuse of this information could harm Board operations and bank customers. We assessed the Board's and Reserve Banks' controls for protecting such information in certain examination applications used for supervising community and regional banks.

We found that examiners do not consistently use a process to help purge sensitive documents that are not required to be retained. In addition, some examiners may have access to more sensitive personally identifiable information than is necessary for their job duties.

Our recommendations are designed to help the Board better protect sensitive personally identifiable information.