Is The Congressional Response To The Target Breach Off-Target?

In the aftermath of the TARGET breach announced last month, there has been much talk of how to respond to large-scale breaches of this type.  Lawmakers are eager to write legislation to increase the FTC's enforcement powers and create a national breach notification standard.  But if the congressional response focuses entirely on breach notification and on strengthening the hand of the FTC, then Congress will be, well, off-target.  As I write in the IAPP's Privacy Perspectives today, it is not enough to improve our ability to clean up the mess after a breach occurs – we also need to focus on doing more at the front end to identify and punish hackers and to stop stolen data from ever being used.