Friday 21 September 2018

UK Regulator Fines Equifax £500,000

The Equifax Data Breach 2017

Image result for EQUIFAX LOGO
Equifax suffered a massive data breach last year between mid-May and the end of July, exposing highly sensitive data of as many as 145 million people globally.
The stolen information included victims' names, dates of birth, phone numbers, driver's license details, addresses, and social security numbers, along with credit card information and personally identifying information (PII) for hundreds of thousands of its consumers.
The data breach occurred because the company failed to patch a critical Apache Struts 2 vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638) on time, for which patches were already issued by the respected companies.

Why U.K. Has Fined a US Company?

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), who launched a joint investigation into the breach with the Financial Conduct Authority, has now issued its largest possible monetary penalty under the country's Data Protection Act for the massive data breach—£500,000, which equals to around $665,000.
The ICO said that although the cyber attack compromised Equifax systems in the United States, the company "failed to take appropriate steps" to protect the personal information of its 15 million UK customers.

Breach Was Result of Multiple Failures at Equifax

The ICO said that Equifax had also been warned about a critical Apache Struts 2 vulnerability in its systems by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in March 2017, but the company did not take appropriate steps to fix the issue.

More info and source: The Hacker News