When’s the last time you checked your 401(k)? If you don’t know, you may want to change that. Here’s why.

PITTSBURGH — With cyber crime on the rise, government watchdogs report that retirement accounts, like 401(k)s, are at risk.

They want to overhaul how those accounts are protected.

“We’re talking about not only personal information on each of us that may hold a retirement plan but also actual money,” said Nick Marinos, GAO’s director of IT and cybersecurity issues.

Better protecting what could amount to your life savings and personal information is the goal of a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

“Many of the same things that we fear within our social media accounts, our bank accounts are the same risks that we see within the retirement plan industry,” Marinos said.

The GAO says retirement accounts, valued at $6.3 trillion as of 2018, and the large firms that manage them are big cyber targets.

The GAO report says since so much information is shared among multiple parties, the U.S. Department of Labor should create clear guidelines about who is most responsible for mitigating cyber threats and how that should happen.

“But there’s also a lack of clarity within this industry as to who is identified as a financial institution,” Marinos said. “That relates to another recommendation we made to ‘labor’, that the department should put out a better sense of clarity as to who has ultimate fiduciary responsibility for protecting our information.”

While that is being sorted out in Washington, D.C., consumers can act right now.

Watch the video above to see what steps you can take to protect your savings.

Clark Howard: 401k Withdrawals Clark Howard: 401k Withdrawals

©2021 Cox Media Group