What has changed since the Equifax data breach one year ago?

Thursday, September 6, 2018
What has changed since the Equifax data breach one year ago?
Nearly half the country, just shy of 150 million consumers had their information compromised. Equifax was chastised for its poor handling of the event. So where do we stand today?

This Friday marks the one year anniversary of the Equifax data breach announcement. Nearly half the country, just shy of 150 million consumers had their information compromised. The company was chastised for its poor handling of the event. So where do we stand today?

I want to put some questions to Equifax, but they passed on this interview opportunity. An Equifax spokesperson sent us a written response:

"The company has made a host of operational, and technological improvements to further protect Equifax data and systems. In fact, in 2018 alone, we will increase our investment in security and technology by more than $200 million. Nothing has been off the table when it comes to addressing data security.

RELATED: Equifax finds additional 2.4 million impacted by 2017 breach

Equifax has brought in a number of new hires from highly respected organizations, all of whom have deep security experience, including a new CISO who reports directly to our CEO.

The changes we are making to enhance data security include things like enhancing procedures, reducing the scope of sensitive data retained in backend databases, improving access management controls, increasing network segmentation, deploying additional web application firewalls, implementing additional logging, operating redundant system monitoring, encrypting or tokenizing data where possible and more."

Where do we stand today?

The personal finance website, Nerd Wallet looked into that, and Andrea Coombes from NerdWallet spoke to me in-studio.

Also, Coombes also explains what is a credit freeze, and reveals when they will be free for all consumers.

Watch the video above to see the full interview.