WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), a former technology executive, member of the Senate Intelligence and Banking Committees, and cofounder of the bipartisan Senate Cybersecurity Caucus released the following statement on today’s announcement by Yahoo, Inc. that at least 500 million user accounts had their information compromised in a hack dating back to 2014:

“While we have seen more and more data breaches in the private sector in recent years, many of them affecting millions of consumers, the seriousness of  this breach at Yahoo is huge. While its scale puts it among the largest on record, I am perhaps most troubled by news that this breach occurred in 2014, and yet the public is only learning details of it today.  Action from Congress to create a uniform data breach notification standard so that consumers are notified in a much more timely manner is long overdue, and I urge my colleagues to work together to pass this essential legislation.”

Sen. Warner has been a leader in calling for better consumer protections from data theft. In the aftermath of the Target breach that exposed the debit and credit card information of 40 million customers, Sen. Warner in 2014 chaired the first congressional hearing on protecting consumer data from the threat posed by hackers targeting retailers’ online systems. Sen. Warner also partnered with the National Retail Federation to establish an information sharing platform that allows the industry to better protect consumer financial information from data breaches. Sen. Warner currently is working on bipartisan legislation to create a comprehensive, nationwide and uniform data breach standard requiring timely consumer notification for breaches of financial data and other sensitive information.

###