Newsroom

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NAFCU Hails Sens. Rockefeller, McCaskill for Response to Home Depot Breach
and Risk to Consumers

Washington (Sept. 11, 2014) - National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) President and CEO Dan Berger today praised the efforts of Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman John Rockefeller, D-W.Va.,and Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Chairman Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., to seek a briefing from Home Depot on its recent data breach. The breach has the potential to affect anyone who shopped at the company's stores in the U.S. or Canada since April 2014.

"We appreciate the leadership of chairmen Rockefeller and McCaskill on data security, and the Home Depot data breach in particular," said Berger. "Data breaches have reached epic proportions. The latest attack on Home Depot underscores the urgent need to protect consumers and for Congress to establish national data security and breach notification standards for retailers. Credit unions will continue to protect members' accounts, but we need retailers to do their part. The request for a briefing is a good start, but we ultimately need Congressional action on this issue."

NAFCU also commends Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., for their recent request for a Federal Trade Commission investigation into the Home Depot data breach.

NAFCU was the first financial trade organization to call for national data security standards for retailers following the Target breach, and it continues to push for legislative action on Capitol Hill. Credit unions and banks are already subject to such standards under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, but retailers are not.

The association is also a member of the Payments Security Task Force, a diverse group of participants in the payments industry focused on EMV chip implementation, including ways to help reduce testing and implementation time.

Financial institutions continue to pick up the tab for data breaches. The Target data breach alone will cause credit unions to lose $30 million in card replacement costs and other expenses, according to estimates by NAFCU. Unfortunately, credit unions will likely never recoup much of this cost, as there is no statutory requirement making retailers accountable for costs associated with breaches that result on their end.

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions is the only national trade association that exclusively represents the interests of federally chartered credit unions before the federal government and the public.

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Contact: Patty Briotta | 703-842-2820 | pbriotta@nafcu.org