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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NAFCU Statement on Certification of Financial Institutions' Lawsuit As Class Against Target Corp.

Washington (Sept. 15, 2015) - National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and General Counsel Carrie Hunt issued the following statement in response to the certification of financial institutions' lawsuit as a class against Target Corp. based on the retailer's huge data breach in 2013.

"NAFCU is pleased with the court's decision to certify financial institutions as a class in the data breach suit against Target," said Hunt. "As we have consistently maintained, credit unions deserve to be made whole for their losses, and this includes the opportunity to pursue all legal options available. Today's class certification constitutes one important avenue for recovery."

"This lawsuit is only one part of the equation," said Hunt. "To prevent these types of data breaches in the future, Congress must act to protect consumers' financial information by enacting national data security standards for retailers and holding them directly accountable for their data breaches."

The 2013 Target breach exposed approximately 40 million credit and debit cards to fraud. The full cost of the breach to financial institutions still remains to be determined.

NAFCU was the first financial trade organization to call for nationaldata securitystandards for retailers, and itcontinuesto push for legislative action on Capitol Hill. NAFCU is a member of the Payments Security Task Force, a diverse group of participants in the payments industry that is driving a discussion on payments system security. NAFCU is also a founding member of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council and the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which work on infrastructure cybersecurity.

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions is the only national trade association focusing exclusively on federal issues affecting the nation's federally insured credit unions. NAFCU membership is direct and provides credit unions with the best in federal advocacy, education and compliance assistance. www.nafcu.org.

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