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 a reported $67 million settlement from Target Corp. and Visa Inc. based on the retailer's huge data breach in 2013.
“We continue to urge Congress to act to protect consumers’ financial information by enacting national data security standards for retailers and holding them directly accountable for their data breaches."
“This settlement is a step in the right direction but it still may not make credit unions whole,” said Hunt. “Credit unions deserve to be fully compensated for their losses.”
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 national data security standards for retailers, and it continues to 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 member of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council and the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which work on infrastructure cybersecurity.