Companies should voluntarily report breaches: NJ lawmaker

Home Depot is just the latest large retailer to investigate a possible credit card data breach and a New Jersey legislative leader predicts it will not be the last.  He believes companies must report potential hacking to the proper authorities.

Assemb. Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield) said: "I'm urging businesses to forward any information they have concerning breaches in cyberspace in their own networks to the Homeland Security director (Christopher Rodriguez) in New Jersey."

Bramnick, the Assembly's minority leader, said, "I know of no mandatory regulation, but the breaches that occur now on businesses, they could easily be a breach on another business -- and since it's a new type of attack, our Homeland Security should know about it."

Home Depot is reportedly working with banks and federal investigators to probe its potential breach. Target, P.F. Chang's, UPS and others have had security breach issues this year as well, and the FBI is said to be investigating a possible hacking at J.P. Morgan.

"I understand that businesses are concerned about releasing information about a security breach, but this is really in the public interest," Bramnick said.

The ripple effects of the massive breach at Target are still being felt. Published reports indicated that 40 million debit and credit card accounts were compromised, and upwards of 70 million customers may have had their personal information stolen by hackers.