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In a continued effort to pass on any responsibility for the largest data breach in American history, Equifax's recently departed CEO is blaming it all on a single person who failed to deploy a patch.
Hackers exposed the Social Security numbers, drivers licenses and other sensitive info of 143 million Americans earlier this summer by exploiting a vulnerability in Apache's Struts software, according to testimony heard today from former CEO Richard Smith. However, a patch for that vulnerability had been available for months before the breach occurred.
Now several top Equifax execs are being taken to task for failing to protect the information of millions of U.S. citizens. In a live stream before the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce committee, Smith testified the Struts vulnerability had been discussed when it was first announced by CERT on March 8th.
Smith said when he started with Equifax 12 years ago there was no one in cybersecurity. The company has poured a quarter of a billion dollars into cybersecurity in the last three years and today boasts a 225 person team.
However, Smith had an interesting explainer for how this easy fix slipped by 225 people's notice — one person didn't do their job.
"The human error was that the individual who's responsible for communicating in the organization to apply the patch, did not," Smith, who did not name this individual, told the committee.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by srobert on Monday October 09 2017, @04:04PM
... then it should also be important to develop a methodology which makes failing to do it right nearly impossible. Low level employees can carry it out if it's been developed and they've been properly instructed. Mid-level employees can develop the methodology, but they lack the the authority to dictate that it be implemented across the board. The authority to see that such is developed AND implemented rests with those at the top of the hierarchy. So if there was just one person on whom the blame could be placed (which I doubt), then that person would be the CEO.