The three largest credit reporting companies in the U.S. will move to adopt a single, coordinated encryption standard to afford greater protection for the reams of electronic data they receive from banks, marketers and credit card companies.
Equifax, Experian and TransUnion announced Thursday that the joint effort will include developing and deploying robust 128-bit secret key technology.
The three national credit-reporting powers said they will also set up an ongoing encryption task force to make sure that encryption standards adopted by the industry remain up to date.
In announcing the joint effort to come up with new data security standards, the companies pointed out that they have already implemented security measures in accordance with the Safeguards Rule of the Federal Trade Commission. The new encryption standard, when developed, will simplify the job of protecting that data by letting the companies transmitting information to Experian, Equifax and TransUnion use a single encryption protocol to do so.
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