WASHINGTON — CUNA is urging credit unions to keep a tally of their costs from the Target breach, and plans to open a data collection website next week where CUs can report their numbers.
The massive Target breach that is estimated to have compromised 40 million debit and credit cards apparently has CUNA focused on ways to help CUs recover their costs, which will be significant.
CUs this past week have reported they are
"As we all know, the Target breach has the potential for creating substantial expense for credit unions and other financial institutions," said CUNA President Bill Cheney. "CUNA is on the case, looking out for credit union interests, and will continue to do so. We have been in close contact with the payments processors, getting their take on what has happened and the impact on financial services providers, especially credit unions."
Cheney added that CUNA has initiated discussions with key congressional contacts about its "on-going concerns" about the responsibility of merchants to protect data, and be accountable for the consequences of data breaches when they occur.
"In the meantime, we are setting up a website to collect data on costs incurred by credit unions in response to the Target breach," he added.
CUNA urged credit unions to keep tracks of costs as they incur, and when the new website goes live, enter the data.
"Overall, our top priority has been to make sure that credit unions and banks have the information they need to service their members in the short term," Cheney said. CUNA will keep credit unions "closely informed as our work on this matter develops, particularly when Congress returns to work."
