Double jeopardy as FCA fines Equifax for role in cyber breach after a long-running investigation.
16/10/2023
In 2018, Britain's Information Commissioner's Office fined Equifax Ltd £500,000:-
- equifax-ltd-mpn-20180919.pdf (ico.org.uk) https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/mpns/2259808/equifax-ltd-mpn-20180919.pdf
Now [13/10/23], the FCA has fined Equifax £11 million ($21.2 million) for its role in "one of the largest" cyber security breaches in history.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that in 2017, Equifax's parent company, Equifax in the United States, was:-
- Subject to one of the biggest cyber security breaches in history when the personal details of as many as 147.9 million US consumers were accessed during the hack.
The FCA said the hackers could also access the personal data of 13.8 million UK consumers because the data was stored on company servers in the United States.
Equifax had outsourced data such as names, dates of birth, Equifax membership login details, partially exposed credit card details and addresses.
The FCA said in a statement that it exposed UK consumers to financial crime risk.
- "The cyber-attack and unauthorised access to data was entirely preventable,"
Equifax said it has cooperated fully with the FCA throughout the long-running investigation.
Patricio Remon, president for Europe at Equifax said:-
- "Since the cyber-attack against our company six years ago, we have invested over US$1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) in a security and technology transformation,"
- "Few companies have invested more time and resources than Equifax to ensure that consumers’ information is protected," .
The FCA said.
- The UK arm of Equifax found out that consumer data had been accessed six weeks after the parent company discovered the hack,
- "There were known weaknesses in Equifax Inc’s data security systems and Equifax failed to take appropriate action in response to protect UK customer data,"
- That Equifax's fine was discounted after it agreed to resolve the matter and cooperate to a high level with the watchdog.
SOURCE
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