FDIC Head Says More Vigilance Needed to Prevent Hacks

Published

July 27, 2011

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Sheila Bair, chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, recently said that both financial institutions and regulators must do more to protect consumers’ private information, including adopting more stringent security policies, according to a report from USA Today. In particular, Blair said the agency is working on developing “additional guidance to enhance authentication procedures when customers access their accounts online.”

Though the hacking attack on Citi was revealed earlier this week, the company also revealed it first learned of the incident last month, the report said. This has led to some lawmakers criticizing the institution for the way it handled the situation, and demanding to know how it plans to ensure this type of attack doesn’t happen again.

The incident affected about 200,000 of Citi’s 21 million North American credit card customers, exposing their names, addresses, email addresses and account numbers. However, other information, including Social Security numbers, was not accessed by the criminals.

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