Data breaches

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is among several agencies that "continue to investigate events related to" last year's Equifax brief, the credit reporting firm said in a securities filing.

The bank overcharged some customers and some received inappropriate investment advice; 2.4 million more people were affected by the breach.

Equifax, the credit bureau breached by hackers last year, said the card-payments industry may cut off its access to certain data or impose fines if the company can't prove it's addressed weaknesses.

A bipartisan bill to establish a federal security framework follows a string of efforts beset by congressional turf battles.

The finance sector had the highest number of breaches of all industries, with 471 in 2016, according to a report issued Friday by the White House's Council of Economic Advisers.

It is unclear whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is abandoning its supervisory oversight of Equifax or just taking a back seat to the Federal Trade Commission as the latter investigates the credit bureau.

Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney has cited hundreds of confirmed and suspected data breaches as justification for his halting the bureau's data collection activities last month.

This dangerous "wild west" scenario of fraud and breaches is pushing improving or revamping online authentication to the top of this year’s to-do list for both online companies and governments, writes Robert Capps, vice president of business development for NuData Security.

Credit unions, trade associations and others wishing to join the Credit Union National Association's class action suit against Equifax have until the end of January to do so.

With less than three months before the PCI DSS Requirement 8.3 takes effect, all involved in the handling of cardholder data must take definitive steps to review, implement and upgrade their multifactor authentication strategies and implementation to assure compliance, writes Dirk Denayer, business solutions manager at VASCO Data Security.