As the House Financial Services Committee today held a hearing on data security, the American Bankers Association and six financial trade associations wrote to lawmakers calling for a national data security and breach notification standard. In a letter to Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) and Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), the groups called for a standard that would require all entities handling sensitive personal and financial data to have robust protections in place and to notify consumers in a timely manner in the event of a breach. They added that such a standard would help eliminate current inconsistencies between a patchwork of state and federal laws.
“Our existing payments system serves hundreds of millions of consumers, retailers, financial institutions and the economy well,” the groups wrote. “Protecting this system is a shared responsibility of all parties involved and we must work together and invest the necessary resources to combat increasingly sophisticated threats to the payments system.”
