Sen. Elizabeth Warren is taking on Wall Street on behalf of the people again, this time working with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) to make the big banks responsible for
protecting their customers' data from hackers.
Over the past year, cyber attackers have stolen roughly 500 million records from financial institutions, according to federal law enforcement officials. In a joint letter also signed by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Warren asked 16 firms—including Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—for detailed information about cyber attacks they experienced over the past year and how they plan to prevent future breaches.
"The increasing number of cyberattacks and data breaches is unprecedented and poses a clear and present danger to our nation's economic security," the lawmakers wrote in the letter. "Each successive cyberattack and data breach not only results in hefty costs and liabilities for businesses, but exposes consumers to identity theft and other fraud, as well as a host of other cyber-crimes."
Warren and Cummings are asking for in-depth information from the banks: how many customers had their data breached, how much money was involved in fraudulent transactions, who are the suspects in these attacks, and the security measures the banks have taken in response. They ask that security officials from the banks brief Congress on how they are protecting the critical data they hold. They want all of this information to inform cybersecurity legislation that is still pending in Congress.
After we successfully fought back truly awful cybersecurity legislation a few years ago, the issue lost momentum, but it didn't go away. In fact, the Senate is still considering really bad legislation that destroys privacy protections and give companies greater power in spying on their customers while requiring basically nothing from them in protecting their systems.
This move from Warren and Cummings could help shake that up. Thus far, the banks have not had to answer for how they're protecting critical, sensitive information about their customers, not to mention all their money! And the existing legislation doesn't make that happen. By highlighting the issue, maybe, just maybe, they can strengthen the legislation. After all, even Republicans might have a hard time justifying protecting Wall Street when we're talking about 500 million data breaches.