WASHINGTON—Following a series of recent data breaches, the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) and organizations representing companies across the American economy today came together and sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee urging Congress to enact national data breach legislation to better protect consumers. FSR believes Congress must pass strong federal data protection and consumer breach notification legislation to help ensure consumers’ important personal and payment information is not vulnerable to cyber hackers.
“Consumers’ private information is extremely important to them and Congress must act to better protect them,” said Jason Kratovil, FSR’s Vice President of Government Affairs for Payments. “For the first time in over a decade, the banking, payment, retail, telecommunication and technology industries have come together to call on Congress to enact national data security legislation. Congress should harness this momentum and quickly deliver a bill to the President’s desk.”
“Data security impacts every sector of the economy,” the organizations wrote in the letter. “We therefore look forward to working with you and your colleagues to ensure that all sectors employ sound data security and alert consumers when a breach may result in identity theft or other financial harm.”
The multi-industry organizations called upon Congress to enact legislation encompassing the following elements:
- A flexible, scalable standard for data protection
- A notification regime requiring timely notice to impacted consumers, law enforcement, and applicable regulators
- Consistent, exclusive enforcement of the new statute national standard by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state Attorneys General, other than for entities subject to state insurance regulation or who comply with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996/HITECH Act
- Clear preemption of the existing patchwork of often conflicting and contradictory and often contradictory state laws.
To read the full letter, click here.
