The chairman and chief executive of Equifax, Richard F. Smith, retired on Tuesday in the aftermath of a major data breach that exposed the personal information of as many as 143 million people, the credit reporting agency said.
Two other top Equifax executives the chief information officer and the chief security officer stepped down on Sept. 14.
Equifax, based in Atlanta, said this month that hackers had exploited an unpatched flaw in its website software to extract names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and other information about millions of people.
The company faced a blistering outcry from lawmakers and the public for failing to protect the sensitive data and for a response that many found lackluster. A website Equifax created to provide information on the breach was initially plagued by problems, and the company struggled to keep up with a deluge of questions from confused and alarmed consumers.
Three Equifax executives, including its chief financial officer, John W. Gamble Jr., sold $1.8 million in company shares in the days after the breach was discovered but before it was publicly disclosed. (Equifax has said the executives were unaware of the breach at the time of their stock sales.)
Mr. Smith, 57, had been the chairman and chief executive of Equifax Inc. since 2005. He joined the company after a 22-year career at General Electric that included top executive positions in the conglomerates insurance, leasing and asset-management divisions.
Before the data breach at Equifax, Mr. Smith was widely admired on Wall Street for developing new products and increasing sales. Equifax had revenue of $3.1 billion last year, up from $1.4 billion the year he took over
Federal authorities, led by the F.B.I., have opened a criminal investigation into the cyberattack on Equifax.
More than 30 state attorneys general have begun investigations into the breach, and federal lawmakers from both parties have requested information from Equifax and called for hearings on what went wrong. The Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit against Equifax on Sept. 19 sept 19 seeking civil damages and other payments. Mr. Smith had agreed to testify next month before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
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.
There is a class action lawsuit ongoing but you'll have to not use their website for anything because it has a contractual clause that you won't join a class action suit ---
I don't know who these guys are and I've never used any site from them to my knowledge, but I'm told they still have my information and they lost it? What the fuck is this, every last one of them needs to be in jail. ---
