One of the biggest problems we have with data breaches and cyberattacks on corporations nowadays is the fact that, more often than not, the companies in question choose to withhold the fact that they were hacked for months, even years at times. This is an issue that President Obama hopes to address by requiring these companies to report that they were hacked within 30 days of discovering so.
U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to call Monday for new federal legislation requiring hacked private companies to report quickly the compromise of consumer data. Obama is also likely to propose rules that prohibit technology companies from profiting from information collected in schools, according to a report Sunday in the New York Times, quoting White House officials. The proposed federal law on data hacks, which the president is expected to discuss in a speech to the Federal Trade Commission, would require companies to report within 30 days of finding that their data has been hacked, according to the newspaper. It will specify when breaches must be disclosed and makes it a crime to sell a person’s online information abroad. The FTC would have the authority to penalize errant companies.