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NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger praised a White House cybersecurity action plan released Tuesday, noting the importance of addressing the serious threat cyber threats pose to the nation's economy.

"We applaud President Obama's continued commitment to the nation's growing cybersecurity dangers, which affect our economy and consumers," said Berger. "A year after I attended the President's White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University, I appreciate the president's continued focus on cybersecurity and, by extension, data security."

"But more needs to be done. This year, another major positive step forward would be for Congress to pass a national standard for protection of consumer information such as the ‘Data Security Act of 2015,'" Berger continued.

The White House issued the cybersecurity action plan in conjunction with its budget yesterday. The plan addresses the government transition to EMV and calls for multiple factors of authentication and moving away from Social Security number usage.

The Cybersecurity National Action Plan would:

• establish a "Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity" made up of top business and technical figures as well as lawmakers chosen by leaders of both parties;
• propose a $3.1 billion Information Technology Modernization Fund to modernize legacy IT at government agencies;
• launch a National Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign to promote additional authentication factors such as fingerprinting or texted codes, partnering with companies like Google and Facebook;
• invest $19 billion for cybersecurity as part of the president's fiscal year 2017 budget.

NAFCU continues to remain engaged on cybersecurity and data security issues and to advocate for the credit union perspective.