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U.S. House Republicans ask to review Amazon Web Services after Capital One breach
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) was asked by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday to brief them on security protocols for its cloud storage service after a massive data breach of Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N) by a suspect formerly employed by the online retailer.
In a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, Republican members on the House Oversight Committee said they would “carefully examine” consequences of the breach, as the company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) is expected to provide cloud support to the 2020 census and to a computing system for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Earlier in the week, Capital One said personal information, including names and addresses, of about 100 million individuals in the United States and 6 million people in Canada were obtained by a hacker who has been arrested.
U.S. prosecutors have identified the suspect as Paige Thompson, 33, a former Amazon software engineer.
“We respectfully request a staff-level briefing no later than August 15, 2019, on the current status of AWS security protocols in place to ensure the security of sensitive personal and government data,” according to the letter from Representatives Jim Jordan, Michael Cloud and Mark Meadows.
In another letter to Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank, the members of the House Oversight Committee asked the company to hold a staff-level briefing on the incident by Aug. 15.
Reporting by Bharath Manjesh in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang
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