Equifax, a credit and other information supplying service discovered a security breach that may have the potential to affect the information of about 143 million U.S. consumers.
According to Census Bureau estimation, the United States has about 324 million of the population in 2024, which indicates that the Equifax incident influenced a huge number of people in the country.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the sheer scale of the #Equifax breach. They might as well reissue SSNs to every citizen.
— Lesley Carhart (@hacks4pancakes) September 7, 2017
Equifax found that breach on July 29, when culprits subjugated a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain control and access to some specific and certain files.
SEC casings firm that those three Equifax Inc. senior executives – Chief Financial Officer John Gamble Jr., workforce solutions president Rodolfo Ploder, and U.S. information solutions president Joseph Loughran – sold shares worth nearly $2 million days after the cyber-attack was revealed. It is still imprecise and vague to consider whether these share auctions had any concern or anything to do with the breach.
The Executive trio sold a small percentage of their shares on August 1, Tuesday and, August 2, Wednesday. Ines Gutzmer, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based company, said in an emailed statement that “They had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time.” Shares of Equifax floored down more than 12 percent just after trading hours.
Chairman of Equifax and CEO Richard F. Smith stated;
“This is clearly a disappointing event for our company and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do. I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes,”
(2/2) We apologize to our consumers and business customers for the concern and frustration this causes. Learn more: https://t.co/ivVHFb2xA4.
— Equifax Inc. (@Equifax) September 7, 2017
He further added;
“We pride ourselves on being a leader in managing and protecting data, and we are conducting a thorough review of our overall security operations. We also are focused on consumer protection and have developed a comprehensive portfolio of services to support all U.S. consumers, regardless of whether this incident impacted them.”
The company said it is exposed that hackers gained unauthorized access to limited personal information, including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses and driver’s license numbers of certain residents in the U.K. and Canada, all of which Equifax aims to protect its customers. The company also said its investigation has not found any proof and evidence of illegal activity on its ‘core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases.’
Morgan Wright, a cyber-security expert, told “Risk & Reward” that;
“This is the nuclear explosion of identity theft opportunity. They’ve got names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses … I don’t think 143 [million] is going to be the number. Like with anything else, it starts at a number and it always seems to grow. So this thing could grow higher than 143 million.”
According to Equifax, the company has built up a ‘consumer help website’ that will allow them to identify their affected information plus, it also sends a direct notification in the consumer’s mail that they have credit card numbers or any documents having personal information.
It was founded in 1899 Equifax is the oldest of the three credit reporting agencies which gather and maintain information of millions of credit owners globally.
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