Regulations Governing Securities Held in TreasuryDirect

TreasuryDirect is an account-based, book-entry, online system for purchasing, holding, and conducting transactions in Treasury securities. An account owner currently accesses his or her account using a password to authenticate the account owner's identity. Treasury is now introducing additional customer-based authentication mechanisms for accessing accounts. This final rule provides Treasury the flexibility to require additional methods of authentication for the protection of customer accounts. Treasury is also strengthening its ability to respond to attempted fraud and abuse of TreasuryDirect. Currently, Treasury has the authority to close any account. This rule explicitly permits Treasury to liquidate the securities held in the account to be closed and pay the proceeds to the person entitled.