Equifax

Readers comment on the ripple effects of the Equifax breach, who benefits from the CFPB's final arbitration rule, gender-related issues in financial services, and more.

Equifax's data breach may be the most serious, given that it covered 143 million consumers and involved reams of confidential information, but it wasn't the largest. Following are the biggest to date.

Not only will banks be on the hook for counterfeit loans to identity thieves, but they will likely lose loan volume, and ultimately revenue, from changes in consumer behavior.

Yes, the credit bureau goofed badly on data security, and it proved to be worse at crisis management. But other companies have been just as sloppy with cyber defenses, and business and government leaders should have tackled these problems long before now.

Equifax will debut a new service that will permanently give consumers the ability to lock and unlock their credit for free.

Regulators disagree whether proposed changes to capital requirements would ease burden on community banks; JPMorgan on hook if jury award not overturned.

Amid a series of breaches, banks and payment services companies would be far better served by building solutions and programs that work toward instilling consumer confidence, instead of creating situations that continually erode trust, writes Madeline Aufseeser, CEO of Tender Armor.

It’s not just consumers who are worried about identity theft. For the millions of business owners who rely on their personal credit to finance operations, damage to credit scores could have dire consequences.

The identity theft threat created by the Equifax hack and the growth of online lending have given software makers a platform to pitch products that rely on selfies, scans of driver’s licenses and other nontraditional ID methods.

The embattled Smith may lose severance benefits, depending on firm’s probe into data breach; Clayton grilled about why the agency took so long to act after Edgar hack.