Equifax data breach - a story of What Not to do

Originally published: September 10, 2017

This week we learned of one of the nations three largest credit institutions having one of the largest most in-depth breaches of data security and loss of private information in U.S. History.

The way that hackers gained access to company data that potentially compromised sensitive information for 143 million American consumers, including names, addresses, birthdays, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers has all come down to gaining access to files in the company's system. From somewhere in mid-May to July hackers exploited a US website application vulnerability to gain access to these files.

To further worsen the situation, just days after the company admitted that it detected a breach, three executives from the company sold a combined $1.8 million in stock. More suspicious than that is that it took over a month for the firm to disclose that there was a breach in the first place.

Unlike some of my other posts this post does not deal with much of the technical side of how to prevent a data breach but rather how to not conduct business with your customers if it does happen. Of course the best way to deal with this is to defend your data in every way you possibly can. Keep your infrastructure security up to date and make sure to always take time for security, it may take a bit longer but in the long run it is better.

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