Equifax Inc on Friday said that it made changes in its top management as part of its review of a massive data breach, with two technology and security executives leaving the company “effective immediately.”
The credit-monitoring company announced the changes in a press release that gave its most detailed public response to date of the discovery of the data breach on July 29 and the actions it has since taken.
The statement came on a day when Equifax’s share price continued to slide following a week of relentless criticism over its response to the data breach.
Lawmakers, regulators and consumers have complained that Equifax’s response to the breach, which exposed sensitive data like US social security numbers of up to 143 million people, had been slow, inadequate and confusing.
Equifax chief security officer Susan Mauldin and chief information officer David Webb were retiring, the company said.
It named Mark Rohrwasser as interim chief information officer and Russ Ayres as interim chief security officer, the statement said.
Rohrwasser has led the company’s international IT operations and Ayres was a vice president in the IT organization.
The company also confirmed that Mandiant, the threat intelligence arm of the cyberfirm FireEye Inc, has been brought on to help investigate the breach, while it has hired public relations companies DJE Holdings Ltd and McGinn & Co to manage its response to the hack, PR Week said.
Equifax’s share price has fallen by more than one-third since the company disclosed the hack on Sept. 7. Shares shed 3.8 percent on Friday to close at US$92.98.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has built a reputation as a fierce consumer champion, on Friday launched a new round of attacks on Equifax by introducing a bill along with 11 other senators to allow consumers to freeze their credit for free.
A credit freeze prevents thieves from applying for a loan using another person’s information.
Warren also signaled in a letter to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she helped create in the wake of the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis, that it might require extra powers to ensure closer federal oversight of credit reporting agencies.
Warren also wrote letters to Equifax and rival credit monitoring agencies TransUnion LLC and Experian PLC, federal regulators and the US Government Accountability Office to see if new federal legislation was needed to protect consumers.
Equifax, which disclosed the breach more than a month after it learned of it on July 29, said at the time that thieves could have stolen the personal information of 143 million US citizens in one of the largest hacks ever.
The problem is not restricted to the US.
Equifax on Friday said that data on up to 400,000 Britons was stolen in the hack, because it was stored in the US. The data included names, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers, but not street addresses or financial data, Equifax said.
Canada’s privacy commissioner on Friday said that it has launched an investigation into the data breach. Equifax is still working to determine the number of Canadians affected, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said in a statement.
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