City leaders from across the U.S. are calling for governments and private businesses to take stronger measures to prevent data breaches that may cause $8 trillion in damage over the next five years.
A resolution by the U.S. Conference of Mayors advocates increased spending on data security as well as federal support for local governments trying to improve safeguards, according to a statement on Thursday.
“Every day we read headlines about private businesses, local governments and even U.S. naval ship plans being compromised as a result of data vulnerabilities,” said Henderson, Nev., Mayor Debra March. March sponsored the resolution and worked with Switch, a data-center developer based in her state, to write it. “As a nation, we must prioritize investments in protecting our data from human error, malicious attacks and a lack of resiliency.”
[Also read: Two senators demand answers from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos about privacy concerns for ‘Alexa’]
Revelations that data from more than 87 million Facebook users was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a consultant on President Trump’s 2016 campaign, sparked immediate concern on Capitol Hill earlier this year, and reports surfaced in February that voter registration systems in several areas of the U.S. were breached by Russian hackers.
In the aftermath, individual states have begun to consider measures to tighten data regulations. California’s Consumer Privacy Act, if passed, would implement rules similar to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation — which allows consumers to force companies to delete their personal information.
