I was affected by it. You were affected by it. We were all affected by the Equifax breach in September 2017. The truly interesting thing about it is, Equifax wasn't the only company hit by the Struts 2 vulnerability that day. Many other companies were hit by it within that time period, but Equifax became the poster child for the main stream media. It was just too easy of a target because of consumer visibility.
In the two years since the breach, Equifax has been working hard to restore its reputation, not just with consumer protection, but with the companies that depend upon credit data to make real business choices. I wanted to find out what Equifax is doing behind the scenes not just reputation wise, but technology wise when it comes to protecting data. Was it status quo as soon as the buzz died down? Did they pay their fine and go back to business as usual? Or are they making changes under the hood that will make a difference in how financial data is handled and what can be done with it.
I met with Sean Davis, Chief Transformation Evangelist at Equifax, while at Jenkins World in August. It had been two years since the breach, and I wanted to hear what was happening internally, what changes have been made and why we should begin to trust Equifax again. I have to say I was surprised. When I sat down with Sean, I thought there would be hesitancy, some caution as to what could and couldn't be talked about. To my surprise, it was a transparent discussion. I asked him questions I wanted to know as a consumer, as well as the technical queries about what's going on under the hood at Equifax, what changes have been made to make my data more secure.
Is it time to trust Equifax again? I'll let you decide.
photo: Pixabay