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“After the Equifax breach, everyone learned that until there are actual repercussions for cyber attacks (like fines and people going to jail for negligence), if
by OpieCunningham 5y ago
“After the Equifax breach, everyone learned that until there are actual repercussions for cyber attacks (like fines and people going to jail for negligence), if you can weather the storm, over the course of a year or two, there is effectively zero impact to your bottom line.”
It’s even worse than just weathering a storm. Lax security has been incentivized. The Equifax CEO, Richard Smith, stepped down shortly after the public became aware of the breach, with a $90m severance package.
https://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-net-worth/ https://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-net...
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoIt's almost as if making shareholder returns and CEO pay the only indicator of company success creates terrible consequences.
- papito 5y agoJuice the returns at all costs for a few quarters and then walk away with riches from total ruins, you say?
- tudorw 5y agoThis is the way.
- koheripbal 5y agoLong term shareholder returns are directly correlated to the long term company success. It's always such an odd criticism to think of "shareholder returns" as a pejorative.
- seventytwo 5y agoThey key is long-term…
- specialist 5y agoTheOtherHobbes said "only", as in "to the exclusion of all other concerns". Where's the pejorative?
- andrepd 5y agoSuccess for the company, at the expense of everything else (the environment, public health, individual privacy, etc).
- stainforth 5y agoIsn't Equifax a government organization? How do they have severance packages?
- pjc50 5y agoIt's a para-state agency; while Americans don't have ID cards because they're afraid of surveillance, a private company having a complete database of everyone and veto power over mortgages is fine because it's a private company.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoThere's three companies doing it, so they possess the holy blessings of the all-knowing market \s
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pbak 5y ago#latestagecapitalism
- betterunix2 5y agoThe existence of credit scores has tangible benefits that we take for granted. Without such databases we would all pay much higher interest rates and many more people would be denied loans. Very wealthy people would have little trouble, but low- and middle-income people would find it far more difficult to buy a house or a car. The reason it is better to be run by a private company than the government is not that surveillance, but the near-certainty (at least after everything we saw happen over the past 5 years) that a government credit scores agency would be politicized. We would have the same problems we have with equifax, and a whole new set of problems as e.g. the political party that rewrote the tax code to punish people who voted against them tried to weaponize credit scores.
- pbak 5y ago
- jart 5y agoIt's worse than PII leaks and CEOs stepping down. Lax security has become scary. The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Agency was breached shortly after SolarWinds. Let's also not forget about OPM.
- nvr219 5y agoExcept everyone forgot about OPM.
- pbak 5y agoWhat is OPM ? Office of Personnel Management ?
- Frost1x 5y agoYes. In case you're asking what OPM is and not just the acronym intended, OPM is an agency that manages and maintains stewardship of a stupid amount of information about all employees that work for or closely with the federal government. Background checks and investigations, healthcare related policy information, etc. e-QIP, managed by OPM specifically, collects a lot of highly sensitive information on federal employees working in the national security ecosystem was hit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-QIP#e-QIP_security_breach https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-QIP#e-QIP_security_breach
- pbak 5y agoHoly hell... no wonder they snuffed it out in the media. I live in Eastern Europe. A local city with a population of 300-400k was hit with a near total ransomware attack. The hackers asked for 400 bitcoin. The mayor answered to them on TV "You fools, we still do most things on paper here ! We'll just spend the week-end installing windows and word and F** Y* !!!" I sometime find wisdom in the approach from olden times :-)
- djrogers 5y ago> Holy hell... no wonder they snuffed it out in the media. The OPM hack wasn’t ‘snuffed out’ by any means - it was fairly well covered for a cyber attack of it’s era. Perhaps it wasn’t covered much in your part of Eastern Europe, but it was definitely not covered up. The fact that some people have forgotten about it is a completely different issue.
- specialist 5y agoStupid me never learned the trick of failing upwards.