CONSUMER PROTECTION/CYBERWAR/FTC/TREASURY: “A U.S. senator on Tuesday [9-12-17] called for a criminal investigation of executives from credit bureau Equifax Inc (EFX.N) for stock sales after a massive data breach this summer, and said their actions were comparable to insider trading.
The breach, which the company learned about in July but did not acknowledge until this month, also prompted expressions of concern from U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the Federal Trade Commission. Cyber security experts believe it is one of the largest data hacks ever disclosed.
Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, said it was ‘disturbing’ that it appeared executives sold nearly $2 million worth of company stock in the time between learning of a sweeping hacker intrusion and making it public…
Heitkamp is the latest U.S. senator to ask that Equifax be held to account for alleged missteps after it discovered the hack. On Monday, Senator Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Finance Committee, and ranking Democrat Ron Wyden, demanded that Equifax Chief Executive Rick Smith provide a timeline of the breach and its discovery.
On Wall Street, Equifax traded 2 percent higher, to $115.29, reversing slightly a 21 percent slide since the hack was first reported Sept. 7.
Equifax announced last week that it had learned on July 29 that hackers had infiltrated its systems in mid-May, gaining access to a wide swath of personal information.”
-Pete Schroeder, “U.S. senator on Equifax hack: ‘Somebody needs to go to jail’,” Reuters, Sept. 12, 2017 07:36am