Data breaches

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.

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.

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, writes David E. Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision.

Normally tight-lipped about security moves, bankers tell how they are re-examining their systems for Equifax-like flaws and providing new cards, fresh accounts and reassuring advice for anxious customers.

Readers react to Equifax's massive data breach, weigh in on the departure of SoFi's CEO, endorse a new digital identity system, and more.

More than 100 suits have been filed since the company revealed the massive data breach last week; price of digital currency is down 25% since hitting a record high a week ago.

The breach may result in a huge new dump of names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other personal information that fraudsters can leverage to gain access to a legitimate user’s account, writes Jason Tan, CEO of Sift Science.

The best solution to the current broken identity system is to flip the authentication process from third parties to the users themselves.

Lenders aren’t happy with the way the credit bureau has responded to the data breach; JPM chief calls digital currency “a fraud.”

It's only the early days after the Equifax breach, but breadth of the data has the potential to reverberate for some time, requiring a mix of detection, prevention and response, according to John Gunn, chief marketing officer at VASCO Data Security; Atiq Raza, CEO of Versec; and Tim Erlin, vice president of product management and strategy at Tripwire.

TransUnion Chief Financial Officer Todd Cello said Tuesday the firm kept call centers open through the weekend to deal with the flood of calls from anxious consumers.