Thursday, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp’s head Sheila Bair said she might require “banks to strengthen their authentication when a customer logs onto online accounts.” This after Citibank revealed hackers had access the data of almost 200,000 of its credit card holders in North America.
“Security experts said the latest attack may be a watershed moment for the U.S. banking industry, which until now has suffered fewer direct hacker attacks than retailers.
“We’re getting to the tipping point in terms of the number of fraud cases,” said Gartner Research security analyst Avivah Litan.
As regulators weigh whether to require more spending on security, “this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” she said.
Citigroup spokesman Sean Kevelighan said on Thursday that the bank would replace “the majority” of the credit cards affected by the data breach. The bank said its attackers viewed the names of customers, account numbers and contact information, including e-mail addresses.
Citigroup said other information such as birth dates, social security numbers, card expiration dates and card security codes (CVV) were not compromised.”
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