by Jeff Sovern
The article is headlined Congress grapples with preventing the next Equifax-level hack. Excerpt:
Their ideas included like fining companies that fail to adequately protect consumer data, restructuring the credit reporting industry to allow for more competition and requiring data holders to notify consumers whose information has been compromised.
A slew of legislation aimed at instituting tougher regulation on credit reporting agencies has already been introduced since the breach was announced last month, including a bill that would give consumers greater control over the mass amounts of data about them that such organizations collect.
But in the midst of the week’s hearings, top Republicans are expressing caution, saying that a crackdown from Congress may not be the best way to address the problem. * * *
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“The problem is you have to have the right incentives and the incentives, when you’re not facing consumers directly, might not be there,” [Senator] Flake said after hearing Smith testify. “I’m not ready to pile on regulation at this point. We want to find out more and that’s what this hearing was useful for. And we’ll see.
With the thousands of breaches that have occurred over the years affecting more than a billion records, I wonder what more Senator Flake needs to learn.
