A recent
data breach at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board led at least one U.S. Senator to begin backing the need for a national data security law.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, a Hawaiian Democrat, recently noted that he and 42 current and former members of Congress were exposed in the FRTIB data breach suffered last year, and asked pointed questions of the agency's head during a recent hearing, according to a report from the political news site
The Hill. The breach exposed a total of 123,000 federal workers who used the retirement program, and included their names, addresses and Social Security numbers.
As a result, Akaka is now backing a new amendment to the Cybersecurity Act, which would require that federal agencies notify everyone affected by such a data breach, the report said. In the FRTIB incident, employees were notified of the hacking attack in May of this year.
Ondrej Krehel is the chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, and maintains a blog about
data breaches and the far reaching effects they have on both victims and the organizations that suffer them.
© 2003-2012 IDentity Theft 911, LLC. All Rights Reserved