The politicians, which include Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller and four other Democrats, sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking it to create guidelines that would require companies to report major network attacks.
In addition, they wrote, guidelines should require companies to explain details about intellectual property that may have been compromised during an attack and include vulnerability to cyberattacks in corporate risk disclosures.
As Sony has demonstrated, a hacker attack can be devastating to a company's bottom line and potentially to its investors. One analyst told the WSJ last week that he estimated the April attack will cost Sony about $1.24 billion.
Google, Intel, PayPal and Mastercard are just some of the many companies that have also recently suffered significant attacks.