The complete second season of Breach is available now! This season explores the 2017 Equifax breach in detail, which exposed the personal information of 145 million Americans. Names, social security numbers, birth dates, home addresses, and driver's license numbers were captured in the attack. It is widely regarded by IT security experts as the one of the worst breaches in history.
Hosts Bob Sullivan, author and NBC News technology correspondent, and Alia Tavakolian, co-founder and chief content officer at Spoke Media, take a closer look at Equifax’s business model, its history of consumer rights violations, and other factors that contributed to the breach. They speak with consumer rights advocates, IT security experts, technology reporters, and white hat hackers, to uncover what went wrong and why.
The aftermath
As you may have heard, Equifax CEO Mark Begor was grilled in a hearing last month by freshman Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Katie Porter, with the latter pointedly asking whether he'd be willing to publicly share his address, birth date and Social Security number. He, of course, refused. Additionally, financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters proposed a sweeping set of changes to how credit reporting firms collect data on consumers and repackage it for lenders.
Equifax also revealed that it has received legal notices related to the breach from the Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the New York Department of Financial Services. The United States Securities and Exchange commission has also issued a subpoena, and the company has been named in 19 class action lawsuits in courts across the country.
Season 2: The Equifax Breach is online now in its entirety. Download it today!
