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FTC Safeguards Rule Readiness

15 questions · about 5–8 minutes. Progress saves in this session only until you download a report. This is an educational self-assessment aligned to the FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314). It is not an FTC examination, GLBA certification, or legal advice.

An FTC Safeguards readiness check for firms that hold customer information.

This page is a free self-assessment aligned to the FTC Safeguards Rule, 16 CFR Part 314. The sections are Information Security Program, Access, Encryption & Authentication, Change Management & Monitoring, People & Service Providers, Incident Response & Reporting. The questions cover a named Qualified Individual, a written information security program, access and MFA, encryption, service providers, monitoring, and incident response. It is educational. It is not an FTC examination, not a GLBA certification, and not legal advice.

The Rule applies to many non-bank financial institutions. On the work we actually see in Nebraska, that is independent insurance agencies, CPA and accounting firms, mortgage brokers, and auto dealers that keep customer information in an agency system, a mailbox, or a shared drive. A bank with an internal security department is outside this page. This is an educational self-assessment aligned to the FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314). It is not an FTC examination, GLBA certification, or legal advice.

Neighboring tracks, if this is the wrong frame: NIST CSF 2.0 for a general business baseline, HIPAA for a clinic, and CISA CPGs for a city or district. The full set is on the assessment hub. The longer explanation of how SAINT maps the Rule to operations is FTC Safeguards compliance.

Lincoln professional firms and Omaha insurance-adjacent offices.

Lincoln’s version of this buyer is a professional-services office — an agency, a CPA firm, a broker — close enough to Hickman that on-site work is a short drive. Omaha’s version is denser: insurance and finance gravity, broker and TPA offices, and payment teams that move ACH. Business email compromise against those teams is the failure mode we see, not a generic “someone clicked phishing.” West Omaha, Aksarben, Midtown, and downtown are neighborhoods we serve. They are not offices we lease.

There is no Omaha headquarters and no Lincoln storefront. Headquarters is Hickman. Lincoln is about 15–20 minutes north. Omaha-metro is about 55–70 minutes via I-80, scheduled. Papillion, Bellevue, La Vista, Gretna, and Elkhorn are service area on the Omaha hub. The Lincoln hub is the capital-city market page. Industry pages, if you want the vertical before the quiz: insurance, financial services, and CPA and accounting.

Carrier and cyber-insurance questionnaires often arrive in the same quarter as a Safeguards question. This assessment will not fill the carrier form for you. It will show whether the underlying controls — MFA, encryption, a Qualified Individual, an incident plan, vendor oversight — are real or informal. The separate worksheet for insurability language is the cyber insurability check. Email-specific work sits on email security.

Fifteen-odd questions. A score. Then a person, if you want one.

Answer the questions below. They stay in this browser session until you download a report. No account. Most people finish in under 15 minutes; the set on this track is shorter than the NIST and CISA sets. “Not sure” is a gap. If you cannot name the Qualified Individual, that is the answer — do not guess a title to improve the score.

The results page scores the program and breaks it down by section, with the same tiers used on the other tracks: At Risk, Developing, Managed, Optimized. The PDF requires name, email, and company because that is how the confirmation is sent. An optional SAINT review is a 30-minute call, not a retained engagement. Book it or call 531-625-2111. If something is actively compromised, use the incident line instead of finishing the quiz.

We will not stamp the PDF as FTC compliant, and we will not tell a carrier you passed. If the gaps are access, monitoring, and a written program, the operating work is vCISO / risk advisory when you need a named security lead, and managed IT when you need the tenant actually run. Human-led assessments, if the quiz is the wrong shape, are listed under consulting assessments.

Question 1 of 15Information Security Program

§314.4(a)

Have you designated a Qualified Individual to oversee your information security program?

This is an educational self-assessment aligned to the FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314). It is not an FTC examination, GLBA certification, or legal advice.

Want a person to read the gaps with you?

The quiz is free. A 30-minute review is the same booking path as the rest of the site. Hickman-based; Lincoln first, Omaha scheduled. Call 531-625-2111.

How a job with SAINT actually starts

The check on this page is a starting point you can run yourself. It is not an audit, not a certification, and not a promise that an insurer or an examiner will accept the printout. When you want a person to read the result with you, that is a call to the desk.

SAINT Technology Services is the trade name of SAINT Management Group LLC. We are veteran-owned and based in Hickman, Nebraska. There is no Lincoln storefront and no Omaha headquarters. If someone needs a person on site in Lincoln, the drive is short. Omaha is a planned trip. We say that up front so you are not picturing a downtown office we do not have.

Most of the businesses we sit with are small or mid-size: a clinic, a shop, a professional office, a contractor, a school, a city department, a plant, or a nonprofit. The common thread is that one or two people are tired of being the unofficial IT department. If you already have an IT person and you want to keep them, that is co-managed IT. We write down who owns which tickets. We do not show up to replace someone who is doing the job.

Managed IT, when that is the fit, is a monthly program: monitoring, patching, a help desk, and cloud administration for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace when those are in scope. The rate is a documented fixed monthly number once the environment is scoped. We do not publish a sticker price on the website, because a five-person office and a fifty-person office are not the same job. The first-response target during business hours is 15 minutes. Outages and security incidents have a 24/7 line. Those are the same targets already stated on the managed IT page, not a new offer.

The help desk is for the ordinary stuff that stops a workday. A laptop that will not join the network, a shared mailbox nobody can open, a printer that quit, a new hire who needs accounts before Monday. You call (531) 625-2111 or you write the desk. If the problem is an active compromise, use the incident path on this site. Do not wait on a newsletter.

Cybersecurity on an engagement is Huntress or Guardz, not a pile of overlapping tools and not a claim that we are a certified auditor. Huntress is the 24/7 SOC path: endpoint detection, identity threat detection, log correlation, and security awareness training when those pieces are in scope. Guardz is the all-in-one path some smaller offices prefer. We pick one lane with you. Email security sits next to that, because business email compromise is how a lot of Midwest shops actually lose money: a changed bank account, a mailbox rule, a fake invoice. We look for those. We do not promise that nobody will ever click.

Physical security is the same team as the network, not a separate vendor you have to introduce us to. That covers cameras, door access, and a look at the building. Verkada, UniFi Protect, and Salient are products we deploy when they fit the site. A jobsite is a different layout than a clinic hallway, and the jobsite security page is where that scope lives. The SAINT Security Box is a custom enclosure we build when a camera needs power and protection that a catalog mount does not give you. We do not invent camera counts or coverage percentages.

Backups are only useful if someone has restored them. The backup and disaster recovery work is monitoring the jobs, keeping a copy that ransomware cannot simply encrypt with everything else, and testing a restore on a schedule you can see. 'We have backups' is not the same sentence as 'we restored a file last quarter.' If you want the checklist version of that, it is on the backup page and in the operations notes.

The network work is design and upkeep: UniFi where that is the right stack, Fortinet when you need that firewall, Wi-Fi that reaches the back office, and a diagram your next IT person can read. Business fiber, when you want it, is ALLO service we provision as an authorized agent. Availability is an address check. We do not publish carrier price lists or promise a speed. Hosted voice, Teams voice, and analog or PRI lines are quoted the same way: one ticket path, after we know the address and what you have now. Failover internet is a design for a second path. The carrier still delivers the circuit.

Website design and website management are on this site as their own pages. Domain management and domain security cover the registrar, DNS, and the locks that keep someone from walking off with the name. None of that is bundled into managed IT unless we wrote it into the scope.

Assessments and the free tools are there so you can see a gap before you buy anything. The domain security scan, the insurability check, the downtime calculator, the breach check, and the short quizzes for NIST CSF, HIPAA, CISA, the FTC Safeguards Rule, and GDPR are educational. They are not a certification and they are not a legal opinion. A security risk assessment, a physical security assessment, a vendor assessment, or a critical infrastructure walk-through is a scoped job with a written result. If a page says the work is advisory, that is what it is.

AI, when it is in scope, is governance and setup. Readiness, a written policy, vendor questions, training for the people who will actually use Copilot or Gemini, and a fractional chief AI officer when an office wants that seat part-time. We will tell you when the honest answer is to leave a feature off. We will not dress up a prompt as a transformation.

A first conversation is short. You call (531) 625-2111 or you book a time. We ask what is breaking, what you already pay for, and who has the admin passwords. Then we look. The output is a written plan: what to keep, what to fix, and what can wait. You can stay with your current provider. We would rather say that on the first call than discover it after a quote. If you want a partner to resell or refer work, that conversation lives on the partner program pages, separate from a customer assessment.

Lincoln pages are the detailed local versions. Omaha pages are the second set. If you are comparing those two, start with the city that matches the building you care about most, then open the service under it. The phone number does not change. Desk line: (531) 625-2111.

If you have more than one building, say so on the first call. A Lincoln office and an Omaha office can sit on one agreement, with the same help desk and a note about which site gets the scheduled visit. A clinic with a guest network and a clinical network is a different drawing than a single retail floor. We would rather see that before we name a tool.

Compliance language on this site is narrow on purpose. HIPAA-aligned IT for a small clinic means identity, email, backups, and a business associate agreement when we touch systems that hold patient information. It does not mean SAINT certifies you. CJIS-aware work for a city or sheriff's office means the access and logging questions in that policy, not a badge. CMMC-aware work for a shop that touches defense contracts means the control list and the evidence, not a rubber stamp. FTC Safeguards and PCI show up the same way: we implement the technical pieces we scoped, and we tell you what we did not take on.

You should leave a first call knowing three things: who answers (531) 625-2111, what is in the monthly scope, and what is a separate project. Projects are the one-time jobs: a camera install, a firewall cutover, a move, a website, a fiber order. The monthly program is what keeps running after the project truck leaves. If a salesperson ever blurs those two, ask for it in writing. We will put it in writing either way.

Bring what you already have. A list of vendors, the admin login for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and a rough count of people and sites is enough to start. You do not need a network diagram. If the last IT company will not hand over passwords, say that. It happens, and it changes the first week of work more than any product choice does.

If you already know the service, use the links on this page. If you do not, start with the solutions list, Lincoln, or Omaha, then call (531) 625-2111 or book a time.