Richard Smith, the CEO of Equifax (EFX), has retired, the company announced Tuesday.
Shares of the company had been halted ahead of this news. Equifax shares were down 0.2% in pre-market trade.
This news follows a September 15 announcement from the company that its chief security and chief technology officers would retire. This news was released late on a Friday evening.
Earlier this month, the credit data company reported that the information of 143 million Americans had been exposed as part of a data breach. Following this news shares of the company plummeted, and as of Tuesday morning the stock was down about 25% from where it traded before the disclosure.
The company has come under fire since its initial disclosure as subsequent reporting revealed the company had been aware of a vulnerability in its security systems since at least March 2017. Additionally, Equifax was aware its systems had been breached in late July, almost six weeks before the company publicly disclosed the incident.
In early August, three company executives sold stock in the company. The company has said the executives, which included the companys chief financial officer, had no knowledge of the breach before the sale.
Adding to the companys PR woes since its initial disclosure have also been mishaps related to how the company has sought to aid customers who had their information compromised.
Yahoo Finances Ethan Wolff-Mann noted that the company immediately offered customers a complimentary ID-theft monitoring program called TrustedID. However, many noted that the TrustedID terms of service required users to waive their right to sue or join a class action lawsuit to enroll in the product.
Gizmodo also reported that the company had been sending customers to a fake phishing website with a URL similar to its official equifaxsecurity.com website set up following the breach.
