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posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 09 2017, @02:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the someone-was-bound-to-have-said-it dept.

From Consumerist,

A company that supplies stock market indexes reportedly warned investors in August 2016 that Equifax, one of the nation's three major credit bureaus, appeared to be ill-equipped to fight off a sophisticated cyber attack.

The Wall Street Journal writes that MSCI, which provides a number of indices for tracking and predicting the behavior of the stock market, concluded last summer that Equifax was no longer a company investors could reasonably rely on to keep its data safe.

MSCI has a group of stock indices that take into account a company's economic, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Prior to last summer, Equifax had been included in these indices, but then MSCI determined that Equifax had failed to perform regular cybersecurity audits, train its employees to recognize risks associated with an attack, or have an emergency response plan in the case of a breach.

At first, Equifax remained on the MSCI ESG Leaders index, but with a 0/10 score for privacy and data. (Competing credit bureaus TransUnion and Experian scored a 4.9 and 6.9, respectively.) Then, in Nov. 2016, Equifax was removed from this index over concerns about data security.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @06:04AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @06:04AM (#579152)

    Because that has been tried many times throughout history, and the result is invariably, in the immortal words of Thomas Hobbes:

    Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man. [...] In such condition there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual Fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

    Starting Score:    0  points
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  • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @06:24AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @06:24AM (#579158)

    I don't know what alternate timeline you're from, but big, in-your-face, do-as-we-say government has always existed, and has always distorted the signals of the free market.

    Indeed, it's only been in the last few centuries that the ideas of capitalism have been recognized explicitly; even before they were ideas, those principles are what have pulled man up out of a world that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Capitalism has been man's saving grace, despite the parasite that is government, sucking away at the productivity that would otherwise be there in full.

    Though they have always emerged naturally, and are the only things that have ever made man's life better, markets of voluntary interaction are nevertheless a very young idea. Maybe, sometime, we should try building society a around that idea—indeed, anyone who is interested in living a society that is actually civilized should be interested in building a society around voluntary interaction.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday October 09 2017, @08:46AM

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Monday October 09 2017, @08:46AM (#579194) Homepage Journal

      Maybe, sometime, we should try building society a around that idea—indeed, anyone who is interested in living a society that is actually civilized should be interested in building a society around voluntary interaction.

      I don't know. My forbears *voluntarily* moved to the United States. They freely chose to be a part of this society. No one forced them, with a gun or otherwise, to be Americans. They *voluntarily* chose other individuals to represent them in the councils of government for their municipalities, states and the national government.

      They spoke out with their voices, their votes and their wallets to help create the society of which they wanted to be a part. No one forced them to be a part of this society.

      I was born in the United States. I have done all of the above and our society most certainly hasn't been violently imposed upon me. If I don't like how the place I live is run, I can work to change it, I can move to another place within the United States, or I can leave the country altogether.

      Those who founded these United States created the various local, state and federal laws, as well as city charters, state constitutions and the US constitution. Those laws and documents were voted upon and implemented without the use of force, except against the English monarchy which was expelled expressly because its edicts were enforced with violence.

      The story is much more complicated, of course. Enslaved persons, women and others were not consulted in the creation of the United States, and the indigenous population was nearly wiped out by your kind. Fortunately, we banned the traffic in, and ownership of, human beings. And we belatedly granted the political franchise to half the population.

      Do we have a perfect system? No. Are there serious problems in our society? Yes.

      But (at least in the US) we most certainly do not live under a "violently imposed" regime.

      You're quite a piece of work. And you know you're wrong, yet you just blather on as an AC because you don't have the courage of your convictions. In fact, I suspect you don't really have any real conviction, you're just a loser who makes himself feel better by trashing the world around you, rather than trying to create a better one.

      It's sad. I feel pity for you.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @11:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @11:06AM (#579234)

      Caveat Emptor is the only regulation you can actually trust to produce a working society

      This story is saying it was publicly known from at least August 2016 that Equifax had poor security. Yet the response Equifax's customers (prospective creditors) was underwhelming.

      anyone who is interested in living [in] a society that is actually civilized should be interested in building a society around voluntary interaction.

      The people whose information was exfiltrated, who stand to be harmed most, weren't interacting directly with Equifax.

      The story about the IRS choosing Equifax for a no-bid contract after the data theft was announced supports your point. I don't see how this story does.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @02:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @02:17PM (#579272)

    When two tribes go to war, the war doesn't spread around the world.