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Federal officials are stepping up their warnings to large U.S. banks as some of them have seen an increase in attempted cyberattacks recently.

The Wall Street Journal reports that regulators have asked banks, including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., to monitor attempts by hackers as they search for weakness in their networks.

"Financial institutions are attractive targets to hackers because of their wealth of sensitive consumer information," the article notes. "Moreover, a successful attack on a financial institution has the potential to cause market turmoil."

Cybersecurity is an ongoing concern for all entities that hold consumers' personal information. Just last week, Facebook announced a breach that let attackers "hijack user profiles," which affected some 90 million users, KrebsOnSecurity reported.

While financial institutions are held to strict data security standards under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, not all entities that hold similar consumer information are accountable to such standards.

NAFCU remains engaged with regulators and lawmakers to establish a strong national data security standard and ensure all entities that collect and store consumers' financial information are held accountable. The association has also shared with Congress principles credit unions would like to see addressed in any comprehensive cyber and data security legislation.