Oversight Republicans want briefings from Capital One, Amazon on breach

Top Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday demanded briefings from both Capital One and Amazon following the breach of data for over 100 million Capital One customers that was stored through Amazon cloud storage services.

The lawmakers, including Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), asked that both companies provide staff-level briefings to detail the data breach by Aug. 15. The House is in recess until Sept. 9.

“The committee regularly conducts oversight of data breaches at financial institutions,” Jordan and subcommittee ranking members Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Michael Cloud (R-Texas) wrote to Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank.

“To help us more fully understand Capital One’s recent incident and its potential to affect millions of Americans, we ask that you please arrange a staff-level briefing on the incident, its nature and scope, as well as Capital One’s response to the disclosure,” they added.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) also expressed interest in looking into the data breach, telling The Hill in a statement on Wednesday that “our Committee has a long and bipartisan history of investigating data breaches in the government and private sector and we look forward to hearing more information about what happened from Capital One.”

The breach, announced earlier this week, impacted around 100 million Americans and six million Canadians, and involved an individual gaining access to Capital One credit card applications and around 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers.