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On Friday, Equifax announced that two top executives would be retiring in the aftermath of the company's massive security breach that affected 143 million Americans.
According to a press release, the company said that its Chief Information Officer, David Webb, and Chief Security Officer, Susan Mauldin, would be leaving the company immediately and were being replaced by internal staff. Mark Rohrwasser, who has lead Equifax's international IT operations, is the company's new interim CIO. Russ Ayres, who had been a vice president for IT at Equifax, has been named as the company's new interim CSO.
The notorious breach was accomplished by exploiting a Web application vulnerability that had been patched in early March 2017.
However, the company's Friday statement also noted for the first time that Equifax did not actually apply the patch to address the Apache Struts vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638) until after the breach was discovered on July 29, 2017.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/equifax-cio-cso-retire-in-wake-of-huge-security-breach/
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday September 18 2017, @12:37PM (2 children)
Their customers are companies considering giving credit cards or loans to individuals. They pay Equifax, and get information on the individual. Supposedly, this is the same information that you see when you ask for a copy of your credit report. However, numerous anecdotes would seem to indicate that that there is additional information that they only show their real customers.
Can they survive? That depends on the lawsuits. Given the size of this breech, it seems entirely likely that the judgements will drive Equifax bankrupt. That doesn't mean much - that's just a way of limiting the financial damage. The company will almost certainly rise again, under cover of the bankruptcy laws, and continue where it left off. If it gets really bad, maybe they will sell their business assets to a new entity (formed for the purpose), so that they can resume business under a new name.
Most importantly, be assured that none of the executives will suffer. Remember the 2008 financial crisis? The one that nearly brought down the entire international banking system? A couple of years after the crisis, I checked on the executives of the companies most to blame for the mess. Without exception, they all found soft landings. Either they retired, or - if they were younger - they were in new CxO positions at other banks, private equity firms, or whatever. Aside from a bit of momentary embarrassment, the results of their malfeasance didn't personally inconvenience them at all.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday September 18 2017, @07:04PM
> it seems entirely likely that the judgements will drive Equifax bankrupt
They'll settle out of court with the DOJ for a ridiculously small amount, and people will be rewarded for a job well done.
Can we attack the real problem: Why the [bleep] is your SSN, DOB and address all anyone needs to completely impersonate you?
I thought we celebrated that 21st century thingy, a long while back. Some systems didn't get the memo...
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday September 18 2017, @09:30PM
There is additional information they show their real customers, yes.
Among them: you have a separate credit score for car buying, for example. In my experience it is typically lower than your main credit score. This is not included among the free ones you can request. There is also a separate one for something home related, I think getting home mortgages. There are probably another two or three besides.