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The Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will examine private sector data breaches during a hearing Thursday. Representatives from Equifax and Marriott International – both of which experienced data breaches that exposed millions of consumers' records – are set to testify.

The hearing is set to begin at 10 a.m. Eastern Thursday.

NAFCU has long been active with lawmakers on the data security issue, and was the first group after the massive 2013 Target data breach to call for a legislative solution to reform the nation's data security system. It is also a key pillar of the association's 2019 advocacy priorities.

Ahead of a House Financial Services Committee hearing last week, the association noted the importance of the nation's credit reporting system for credit unions and the need to address data security within the system in light of the 2017 Equifax data breach. That data breach exposed the personal information of more than 145 million Americans and a House report determined the incident could have been prevented.

Following news of the Marriott data breach in November, NAFCU urged leaders of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees to take action on a national data security standard, highlighting that the Marriott breach is one of the largest breaches of personal data. The company revealed that as many as 500 million customers had information – including names, addresses, payment card details and passport numbers – compromised in a data breach going as far back as 2014.

NAFCU will continue to be a leading advocate for national data security standards.