Data breaches

Hackers accessed driver’s license data on nearly 11 million people, the company says; the rally in bank shares may sputter out if third-quarter earnings reports disappoint.

Day two of Equifax hearing focuses as much on business model as on the data breach; Fed chair again says she supports bank rules that are not "unduly burdensome."

Credit bureaus can address identity theft by advancing the robustness of their security processes and abandoning outdated systems that rely on our personal information, writes Jason Brvenik, chief technology officer for NSS Labs.

Losses in sales and penalties from chargebacks may hurt business' sustainability, writes Monica Eaton-Cardone, chief operating officer at Cargebacks911 and Global Risk Technologies.

Equifax mismanaged its recovery by asking for personal information to determine if a user was affected and then issuing a predictable PIN code to those who requested a credit lock, moves that diluted confidence in the company, writes Timothy Crosby, senior security consultant for Spohn Security Solutions.

The week of Oct. 2 is shaping up to be a significant one for the financial services industry on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers grill the top executives of Equifax and Wells Fargo, as well as the top regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

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.

Diminished returns from basic card breaches will turn crooks' attention to much larger and more dangerous attacks on entire payment systems, writes John Christly, global chief information security officer for Netsurion.

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.

The Sonic breach coupled with the tsunami of recent breaches might just be the game changers that lead U.S. federal authorities to better protect the data collection, processing and storage of customer data, writes Robert W. Capps, vice president of business development for NuData Security.

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

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.

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.

Equifax observed an increasingly well-worn ritual of scandal-ridden firms by jettisoning CEO Richard Smith: apologize, promise to do better in the future, and sacrifice your top executive in the hopes it will ward off action by Congress and regulators.

Data breaches and payment hacks require not only tech measures, but crisis management. Had Equifax gotten out in front of the story, particularly during the slow news period of August, it would have earned kudos and perhaps mitigated some of the public scrutiny.

Historically, the industry has placed much greater emphasis on preventing fraud at the point of transaction without doing enough to stop fraudulent account openings, writes Melissa Townsley, co-founder and CEO of GIACT systems.

Consumers and merchants in a digital ecosystem are changing the way people interact with each other and machines, changing payments and requiring an updated approach to security, according to Mastercard.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Wells Fargo’s treatment of customers was “egregious and unacceptable," hinting that more regulatory action was likely.