Why the United States was wide open to a disaster like Equifax

by Dramelin 4:30 AM 0 comments

Former NSA senior counsel: Need to focus on bad consequences of a breach like Equifax    11:40 AM ET Fri, 15 Sept 2017 | 03:04 "I think people should focus on not just why the breach happened and Equifax`s behavior, but why the consequences of a breach like this are so bad," said Joel Brenner, former inspector general of the National Security Agency.
"Why is it that it`s so easy to steal people`s identity based on the kind of information that`s been stolen? I think we should begin to look at that end of it, we might do more than simply focus on cyber insecurity," he added.
Equifax said the exposed data include names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses and some driver`s license numbers.
It also said that 209,000 credit card numbers were obtained, in addition to "certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.
" Less than two weeks after revealing the compromise it discovered in July, the company said it faced another security issue earlier in March.
While the company`s security lapses have made it a low-hanging fruit for hackers, those incidents — and Equifax`s subsequent handling of them — showed that consumers are at the losing end given the way the U.
credit reporting system is structured, noted Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.