FTC, DOJ urged to bolster cyberattack protections

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have been called on by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to bolster efforts in ensuring proper consumer data protection against cyberattacks and investigating threat actors behind hacking incidents, CNN reports. Schumer noted that such actions are necessary following the recent data breaches at Uber, American Airlines, and Suffolk County, New York. Threat actors behind the Uber attack gained access to Slack messages and invoice-related data and American Airlines attackers compromised some customers' and employees' personal information through a phishing campaign, while Suffolk County had at least one of its agency servers compromised to facilitate access to personal data, according to Schumer. "We want to know who took (private data), what they did with it, and what consumers need to do to protect themselves, and the responsibility is with the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, and the Department of Justice, and were asking them to make to redouble their efforts to answer all of these," noted Schumer, who added that he is also advancing legislation strengthening data breach reporting practices for companies.