Congressional leaders had a tension-filled committee hearing while grilling the former CEO of the consumer credit reporting company Equifax. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, who sits on that committee, believes it’s time to strengthen financial information privacy laws.
Hackers broke through Equifax’ security and stole the private information of more than 140 million people.
Brown says Equifax and other companies need to be held accountable and face stiff penalties. And he'd like to see laws comparable to those that force medical professionals to protect sensitive health information.
“Maybe we ought to start thinking about financial data in the same way because it can be pretty damaging to people when in this case Equifax’ failure -- 145 million people had their data hacked by criminals.”
There’s no sign yet as to whether Senate Republicans would be on board with any new regulations.
