Security standard protecting all Americans of ‘paramount importance’

Credit unions are leading the call for data security legislation because they are “painfully aware” of how lax security can harm individuals’ financial security, CUNA Senior Director of Advocacy Lance Noggle wrote in Credit Union Times Friday. Since 2005, over 1.5 billion consumer records have been exposed through nearly 10,000 data breaches.

“While leaders in Congress are busy discussing ways to keep our data out of the hands of Big Tech, they ignore the all too real threat posed by everyday bad actors illegally obtaining and misusing data for profit and exploitation. It’s time for Congress to realize that we can’t have data privacy without data security,” Noggle writes. These two concepts are often conflated, but it’s important to recognize the difference to ensure that both are accounted for when fixing this growing problem.

“Data privacy looks at the ways that data is legally collected, stored, used and destroyed, and how that is disclosed to the public. Data security, on the other hand, is the protection of that data from nefarious actors,” he adds.

 

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