House Commerce Hearing Will Probe Big Equifax Data Breach, Says Walden

Equifax's revelation that personal information on 143 million Americans may have been compromised prompted House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., to say Friday he'll hold a hearing on the matter after an initial briefing from the credit-monitoring service. The hearing will focus on "what went wrong and what we need to do to better protect consumers from serious breaches like this in the future," he said in a statement. No hearing date was set. FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., tweeted last week that the breach shows Congress must pass comprehensive data security legislation. Warner, a co-founder of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, also suggested lawmakers create a uniform breach notification standard and rethink protection policies for large, centralized datasets of millions of Americans. McSweeny agreed with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that consumers shouldn't trade their rights for trying to protect their data after the breach. Schneiderman tweeted that his staff asked Equifax to remove "unacceptable and unenforceable" language that consumers forfeit their right to sue or be part of a class-action lawsuit if they check the company's site to see if their data was stolen. Democrats on the House Commerce Committee cited an Aug. 30 letter asking GAO to evaluate whether credit monitoring services provide effective protection in response to data breaches. Equifax revealed Thursday that criminals exploited a website application vulnerability from mid-May through July with access to names, addresses, birth dates, and driver's license and Social Security numbers. Credit card numbers for about 209,000 consumers and some dispute documents with personal identifying information for about 182,000 consumers also were accessed, it said. FTC attorney Seena Gressin blogged that consumers also should check their Experian and TransUnion credit reports, consider placing a credit freeze and fraud alert on their files, and take other steps.