"It is our understanding that this is the first time any association has offered this kind of service to its members at no charge," said Gregg Hipp, executive vice president of the league's CU Financial Services Inc.

Letters informing Alabama CUs of the ID Theft contract sent out last month cited the TJX breach as "raising the stakes for all of us" and describing the turnkey ID Theft plan as one "designed to minimize the negative impact of a breach on members, employees, and other affected parties through pre-planned rapid response and effective communications."

The response package is being offered to those CUs that are members of the shared branching unit, Credit Union Service Center, or which participate in the ACUL Card Services program.

For its part, Identity Theft 911, which services CUs and banks on a broad range of resolution and breach services, said it has been talking with "at least two more leagues as well as some banking associations" about copying the Alabama League deal. Identity Theft has also discussed a similar venture with insurance consortiums. "All of these discussions hinge on the number of institutions involved, their asset size, meaning we deal with each group differently depending on individual needs," said Edward Goodman, general counsel and chief privacy officer for the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based firm.

The league called the breach program from Identity Theft "a cutting-edge solution and landmark event" designed to address virtually every aspect of identity theft and security breaches that ACUL member credit unions could face.

The firm's "incident turnkey" portion of the plan "is thorough and immediate, helps the affected credit union more effectively and expeditiously manage any situation that might be construed as a security breach of personal information."

Goodman said its Alabama plan is an important component in meeting NCUA compliance guidelines on written policies and procedures on breaches or database compromises. An NCUA spokesman said it would have no comment on the Alabama program though "we are aware of the many initiatives undertaken by leagues and individual credit unions to deal with security issues." However, the agency would not be "offering guidance" of any specific vendor product or program.

The firm, however, said its package "represents a tremendous benefit to smaller credit unions with limited resources that can least afford the economic ramifications and negative goodwill that could result from a poorly managed response to a security breach.

Hipp, of the league, said the ID Theft program provides CUs and their members a vehicle to assuage, "what can be an extremely traumatic experience" since there is a pre-planned response program in place.

Kathryne L. Brugge, director of sales for the League's CUBS Insurance and who first helped conceive the program with ID Theft last fall, acknowledged there is a personal interest in the venture calling herself a "poster child" of ID theft.

She said she became the victim of a bank credit card scam losing $1,500 in a fraud involving Citibank.

"I know what it is like for our members to go through the trauma, the time taken away from work and lost funds to deal with losses," she concluded. –[email protected]