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.