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NAFCU: 1 year after Target data breach confirmed, consumers vulnerable as ever

WASHINGTON, DC (December 19, 2014) — One year after Target confirmed the company’s massive data breach, and as the holiday shopping season is approaching its peak on Super Saturday, National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) President and CEO Dan Berger today reiterated the need for national standards on data security and breach notification for retailers.

“In spite of a year of retail data breaches since the massive Target data breach, American consumers’ sensitive personal and financial information is vulnerable as ever without greater data security or breach notification standards for retailers,” said Berger. “Congress needs to put an end to cybercriminals’ raid on consumers’ financial and personal information and make retailers subject to the same national data security standards that apply to financial institutions, such as the requirements of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.”
One year after the Target data breach, the figures are astonishing:

According to NAFCU estimates, the Target data breach will cause financial institutions to lose nearly $500 million in card replacement costs and other expenses.
Since Target’s data breach, there has been a major data breach discovered almost every month, with breaches reported at Home Depot, Michaels stores, Sally Beauty Supply, Neiman Marcus, AOL, eBay, P.F. Chang’s Chinese Bistro, Supervalu, Dairy Queen, Jimmy Johns, Kmart, Staples and Bebe Stores.
There have been 744 breaches that have occurred in 2014 thus far, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center – approximately a 25 percent increase from last year.
According to an October 2014 Javelin study, online card fraud will rapidly increase despite the U.S. transition to EMV. Card-not-present (CNP) fraud in the U.S. is expected to be nearly four times greater than point-of-sale (POS) card fraud in 2018.

NAFCU was the first financial trade organization to call for national data security standards for retailers, and it continues to push for legislative action on Capitol Hill. The association has also written Congress urging it to create a bipartisan-bicameral working group to develop legislative responses to retailer data security breaches.

NAFCU is a member of the Payments Security Task Force. The task force is a diverse group of participants in the payments industry focused on EMV chip implementation, including ways to help reduce testing and implementation time, as well as driving a discussion on payments system security. NAFCU is also a 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 that exclusively represents the interests of federally chartered credit unions before the federal government and the public.