Incredible. According to the New York Times, Equifax issued a rather circumspect disclosure on Thursday describing a massive – and only recently-discovered – data breach impacting approximately 143 million Americans. Yup. 143 million people!!!
Said differently, 1 out of every 2 consumers with some form of credit history may – emphasis on may – be at risk here. Take a moment to ponder this statistic… Yikes!
We can debate who was asleep at the wheel. Equifax? Most assuredly. Regulators? In all likelihood, yes. …but before we go down that particular rabbit hole, let’s poke around a little bit and see what this publicly-traded company is doing to clean up this mess, shall we? Ugh, seems the first twenty-four hours after the disclosure produced little more than a hastily-crafted, (and rather confusing), website aimed at pimping fee-based credit protection services from Equifax! Sad.
Update: On Friday, September 15th, Equifax announced that their CIO and CISO will both “retire”, as a result of the massive data breach originally disclosed on September 7th. Take a quick peek at articles from the NYT, the WSJ and from WaPo.
Update: Prior to September 18th, an enterprising software engineer registered a domain name, (an inversion of the name of Equifax’s hastily-crafted website mentioned above), and threw together a fake website comprised of a splash page resembling the pablum Equifax cobbled together sometime around September 7th, just to prove a point.
OK, it’s time to just go ahead and fire pretty much every member of the IT organization at Equifax. They’re all idiots…
I’m in agreement with Farhad Manjoo who said this is an unforgivable breach, and should prompt the regulators into action. Hmmm… We’ll see.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported similar facts on Thursday, (their article contains an enlightening bar chart), then followed up on Friday with a nice article containing details of Equifax’s scramble in the days leading up to Thursday’s disclosure. Definitely worth a read.
Thursday’s Washington Post story covered familiar territory, but it also mentioned several executives exercising stock option sales prior to Thursday’s announcement – more on this in a moment…
On Friday, Washington Post writer Brian Fung offered helpful tips on how to avoid needlessly waiving your rights by unintentionally agreeing to arbitration if you opted to use the website Equifax slapped up earlier this week. …the nays are outpacing the yeas on this one.
If I were a crisis management consultant, (and I’m not), I’d have to say the f*cking idiot brigade running this poor excuse for a company are making pretty much every mistake one can possibly make in a situation like this.
Update: On Tuesday, September 12th, New York Times reporter Ron Lieber wrote an excellent article describing his attempts to elicit responses to what I think are some pretty reasonable questions posted to at least one Equifax executive, (definitely worth reading).
What did Mr. Lieber learn? Almost nothing! …and what about the President of Equifax Global Consumer Solutions, (some pr*ck named Dann Adams), who got all defensive when Lieber opined about whether or not he [Adams] should lose his job? Oh yeah, he definitely needs to lose his job, as does the CEO [Smith], and pretty much every other executive at this miserable excuse for a publicly-traded company!
Update: On Tuesday, September 26th, Equifax announced CEO, Richard Smith, is “retiring”. Yeah, more like “…he got fired…”, and frankly, it’s about time! Now the board needs to “claw back” any bonuses and stock options this jerk might be holding onto… The Washington Post article published the same day outlines the basics from the press release.
Sorry, Equifax, but attempting to rationalize those remarkably well-timed stock option sales as being just that – remarkably well-timed – is just plain stupid.
Bad optics. Bad choices. Bad governance. Bad outcome. Bad. Bad. Bad.
P.S., time to bring back the ratings, right?
:‑& :‑& :‑& the bloviating doofus [Smith]
>: >: >: the vacuous pontificator [Gutzmer]
>:\ >:\ >:\ and, of course, the self-righteous miscreant [Adams]
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