Retailers Give Congress Six Solutions to Cybersecurity Threats

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has given Congress six practical solutions to protect consumers and help businesses prevent cyberattacks and data breaches.

David French, NRF SVP for Government Relations, outlined the solutions during his testimony yesterday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Information Technology.They are:

• Expanding consumer liability protection for using debit cards
• Issuance of PIN-and-Chip cards that incorporate both computer microchips and use of a personal identification number (PIN) to authenticate a transaction
• Adoption of end-to-end data encryption throughout the payments system
• Developing open source, competitive tokenization standards to replace sensitive data with unique and unusable tokens
• Passage of a uniform nationwide breach notification law applying to all entities that handle sensitive customer information
• Bolstering federal law enforcement investigation and prosecution of cybercriminals.

“We should not be satisfied with simply determining what to do after a data breach occurs,” French said. “Instead, it is important to look at why such breaches occur and what the perpetrators get out of them so that we can find ways to reduce and prevent not only the breaches themselves but the follow-on harm.”

NRF’s recommendations were first proposed in an open letter to President Obama published in advance of the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection last month.