President Barack Obama proposed on Monday that companies should be required to notify customers within 30 days if their personal information has been compromised by hackers, a move that follows recent high-profile breaches at some major retailers including Target Corp., Home Depot Inc. and Neiman Marcus.
The legislation of the first federal standard for data breaches will have to be passed by Congress, Huffington Post reported. The initiatives comes as the president focuses this week on technology issues, including strengthening cyber-security and increasing Internet access, which he will tout as part of his State of the Union address in the lead-up to the Jan. 20 speech.
"If we're going to be connected, then we need to be protected," Obama said at a speech at the Federal Trade Commission offices, noting he may be the first president to visit the agency since former President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"As Americans, we shouldn't need to forfeit our basic privacy when we go online to do our business," he added.
The Personal Data Notification and Protection Act will "help bring peace of mind to tens of millions of Americans whose personal and financial information has been compromised in a data breach," the White House said, adding that it would also give companies "the certainty of a single national standard."
The legislation, which is based on a California statute, will also make it a crime to sell customers' identities overseas, the Associated Press reported.
Currently, data breach notifications are governed by a patchwork of state laws. However a lack of uniform practices for alerting customers in the event of a breach have been exposed due to recent hackings.
Aside from the announcement of the proposed legislation, Obama also called for federal protection of information collected from students at school, a measure aimed at preventing companies from selling student data to third parties and from using information collected in school to engage in targeted advertising, according to a White House official.
Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether the new Republican-led Congress will take up either of Obama's legislative proposals, Los Angeles Times reported.
Last month, the White House not only accused North Korea after Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked in a cyber-attack, but also responded with new sanctions against the isolated nation.
