At a time
when the nation’s attention is turned to the hurricane disasters of Irma in
Florida and Harvey in the Houston area, Equifax, one of three large credit
reporting agencies in the U.S. chose, in true political fashion, to disclose
that its customer credit data base has been compromised -- 143 million social
security numbers and other personal information records are now in the hands of cyber criminals.
Equifax
discovered this breach in July but did not report it until late this week and after
certain executives of the company had sold some of their stock.
Company representatives said that the executives
had no prior knowledge of the cyber attack.
A class-action
lawsuit has already been filed against Equifax, and its stock dropped
by 14% in this Friday’s trading.
