Case Study: The General Manager's Role in the Equifax Data Breach

This case study provides a comprehensive analysis of the General Manager's role in navigating the Equifax data breach crisis. It explores the company's overview, the impact of the data breach on stakeholders, and the challenges faced in areas such as government relations, international business development, human talent management, and technology. The study emphasizes the importance of a General Manager's ability to assess the scope of the breach, identify vulnerabilities, and implement remedial security measures to safeguard customer data and mitigate future risks. Furthermore, the case highlights the need for organizations to prioritize data protection and proactively address potential cyber threats, emphasizing that effective organizational protection requires sincere attention from senior level personnel as well as top leadership to successfully initiate mapping threats within the company. Business decisions must significantly be leveraged by cyber risks and its potential aftermath. Such implications do not emerge.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Discussion........................................................................................................................................2
Company Overview.....................................................................................................................2
Equifax breach and its Impact.....................................................................................................3
Stock Days Sale by Equifax Stakeholders Post Data Breach......................................................4
New Challenges for Equifax Post Massive Cyber Breach..........................................................5
Role of General Manager in Identifying Related Factors of Equifax..........................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Organizations tend to act through two bodies of people namely its shareholders and its
board of directors. The board of directors in are in charge of the management of the company’s
business strategies and typically makes strategic as well as operational decisions of the company.
The directors are highly accountable for guaranteeing that the company attains its statutory
obligations and commitment. Equifax Inc being a consumer credit reporting agency primarily
collects information on more than 800 million customers and over 88 million businesses across
the world. Soomro, Shah and Ahmed (2016) have stated that credit risk typically refers to the
level of probability of loss because of the borrowers’ incompetence to make payments on any
type of debt. Thus according to opinions of Gentzler (2018), directors of these companies
engaged in credit risk assessment industry offer proposals to organizations on any potential
threats or existence of the company. Thus proficient managers serving role of a General Manager
(GM) accentuates on the practice of circumventing those losses by understanding the capability
of both assets of bank and loan loss reserves at any given time. The following paper will offer a
self-reflection on the role of a GM in Equifax in developing general management perspective
within the company (Equifax.co.in, 2018). In addition to this, the report will highlight one of the
significant threats which the company has recently faced and its impact on diverse areas of the
organization namely shareholders, government, International business expansion, human talent
and technology.
Discussion
Company Overview
Equifax is recognized as a global information solutions organization that uses unique data
with innovative analytics, technology along with industry proficiency to power organizations and

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individuals across the world by efficiently transforming knowledge into insights which enable to
generate more informed business as well as personal decisions (Equifax.com, 2018).
Furthermore, headquartered in Atlanta, the company executes its operations and has its capitals
in 24 countries such as North America, South America, Europe, Central and Asia Pacific region.
Equifax’s financial marketing services products primarily use consumer as well as commercial
financial data and information and further facilitate its clientele base to efficiently regulate
marketing efforts (Equifax.co.in, 2018). These marketing efforts however primarily involve
targeting and segmentation in order to distinguish and attain new clients for their products and
services.
Equifax Massive Data Violation
Technological Errors in Equifax data breach
In 2017, reports by Rotenberg (2017) have revealed a major threat faced by Equifax that
is recognized as one of the big-three credit information agencies. The company according to Zou
et al. (2018) has made a revelation of the company’s major data breach. The breach has affected
around 140 million individuals in which majority have only been Americans. Although data
belonging to citizens of other countries for majority part countries such as Canada and the United
Kingdom also faced severe impact of the data breach. Furthermore, as per the investigation of
Bourdon (2017), the data breach it has been indicated that the major cause of the breach occurred
due to human error and technology failures. However, these errors created in similar chain of
security systems have been initially designed with redundancies that facilitated several criminals
to easily access credit information of more than 140 million citizens of America. Further
investigations by Zou et al. (2018) have found that the company had been the target of a massive
theft.

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Equifax further has confirmed its detected authorized accessibility that signifies that this
was in case of data theft not only exposure. The information which was extracted included
names, Social Security Account Numbers, date of births along with other contact details. Large
subsets of the impacted individuals also have misplaced details of around 209,000 cards, dispute
documents along with driving licence numbers (Hassan et al., 2018). These are the reports which
indicate lack of encryption of the data resulting to such major breach. Sharton and Kantrowitz
(2017) at this juncture have emphasized on Equifax’s revelation that core credit record databases
were not accurately negotiated.
Stock Days Sale by Equifax Stakeholders Post Data Breach
Janakiraman, Lim and Rishika (2018) have reportedly noted cyber criminals accessed
costly, personal data that includes social security rates, birth rates and credit numbers. However,
surprisingly it has been revealed that only three days after the company obtained information of
the breach, few executives engaged to Equifax have sold shares estimating around $1.9 million.
Deshpande, Nair and Shah (2017) have revealed that although the sales occurred after the
Equifax data violation has been exposed there has been a severe lack of knowledge among the
experts concerning the intrusion during the sale of the stock. Current reports have emphasized on
Equifax’s declined stock rate estimated to be around 32% since the disclosure of the breach
obliterating around $5.2 billion in market cap (Janakiraman, Lim & Rishika, 2018).

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Equifax 2017 Data Breach
Source: (Equifax.co.in, 2018)
As per reports by Janakiraman, Lim and Rishika (2018), during 2017, in a diverse event
after the initial illegal access, cyber attackers have been able to gather access to the online
discrepancy and employed a number of techniques to cover up such unauthorized actions. For
example, the cyber attackers have leveraged current encrypted communication networks
connected to the online dispute portal in order to send information and queries to various other
systems (Baldwin, Buckley & Slaugh, 2017). Furthermore, the cyber attackers have strategically
manipulated system to retrieve the PII existing on the systems. The exploitation of encryption
enabled the attackers to unify to these malicious actions with regular performance on the Equifax
network and further maintain a presence on Equifax’s networks as attackers have strategized
further breaching without being identified by Equifax’s scanning software (Berghel, 2017).
New Challenges in Government for Equifax Post Massive Cyber Breach
With the growing rate of impact concerning Equifax’s massive data breach, Rotenberg
(2017) has noted that lack of Government interest and aftermath have been underscoring reasons

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to which Cybersecurity continues to remain such a major area of concern. Furthermore, reports
of Zou et al. (2018) have observed that plan investors have a fiduciary obligation to preserve and
safeguard the capitals of employee benefits plans. Regardless of the fiduciary consequences
instigating from cyber breaching are still considerably unknown, plan fiduciaries must respond
cautiously in order to safeguard plan participants as well as beneficiaries from such
infringements. Furthermore, as per reports by Solove and Citron (2017), recent massive data
breaches such as the 2017 Equifax massive data theft, have positioned fiduciaries on notice that a
cyber-attack threats have severe effect. Thus in order to mitigate such major data theft risks,
targeted plan fiduciaries must take necessary steps to protect plan capitals from cyber attacks to
efficiently assess the data security measures recently employed by plan sponsor and further
successfully coordinate with internal IT units or external IT consultants on data security efforts
(Berghel, 2017).
Human Talent Issues in Equifax Data Breach
Furthermore, as per the Under Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rules,
Equifax along with other companies can employ credit checks and evaluations particularly when
there is relevance of information (Baldwin, Buckley & Slaugh, 2017). In significance of the
Equifax data breach, several cyber risk assessment business enterprises must taken into
consideration, the value of the cyber information users are requesting for background check
companies sell packages including data which is irrelevant to every position and organizations
which do not ask for frequent information (Berghel, 2017). Furthermore, Equifax must further
aim for safeguarding the data they obtain and successfully extract personal data and information
which should be constrained based on a ‘need to know’ basis and must not be stored in locations
which are typically accessible to organizations’ employee base.

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CEO Identifying Data Breach in International Business Development
Soomro, Shah and Ahmed (2016) noted that following the severe lack of configuration
has been corrected by correcting the expired versions of digital certificate, several administer
have identified certain indicators of an intrusion related to system commands which are being
used in diverse ways which were not part of Equifax’s regular operations. This has led Equifax
to block several web access from which Internet permission have been operated in order to
mitigate such severe cyber breach. However at this juncture, the role of the General Manager
must be taken into significant consideration. Being serving the role of a GM for Equifax during
the time of major data infringement, it has been essential for me as an expert to efficiently
evaluate the scope of the breach and distinguish its underlying implications behind the 2017 data
breach. By thoroughly delving into the insights of cyber data, I will purposefully set up an
investigation in order to efficiently identify factors of vulnerabilities which have been
accountable for creating infringements of PII from the company’s system. Furthermore,
concurrent with this endeavour, my skills and expertise of credit risk management will enable be
proficiently determine the amount of data which has been extracted along with an approximate
estimation of individuals impacted by the critical implications of Equifax’s data breach.
At this juncture, I must accentuate the knowledge and insights I have obtained with my
integrated association with credit risk management, which have facilitated my managerial ability
to foresee credit risk exposure to the business. According to Berghel (2017), Equifax must
develop a robust set of remedial security for every single customer of the company-not only the
ones impacted by recent data breach but also the consumer as a whole in order to safeguard
credit information. As per reports by Deshpande, Nair and Shah (2017), the relief package must
incorporate efficiently controlling detailed customer credit documents ranging the three bureaus,

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with the access of Equifax credit documents with the ability to lock credit file of Equifax
(Equifax.co.in, 2018). In addition to this, the company must focus on an insurance policy in
order to cover out-of-pocket expenses related to identity breaching. Furthermore, author revealed
that Equifax has recently announced an advanced tool that has been under configuration for
months which further will enable wide ranging consumers freeze or unfreeze their credit files
frequently at zero expense (Wilt, 2018). Such a proficient tool is expected to position the control
of customers’ credit information in accordance to its source with the user. However, as per
reports by Gentzler (2018), it has been witnessed that in the consequences of Equifax’s massive
data breach, majority of the allegations concerning lack of data security and protection have been
imposed upon higher level officials of the company. Meanwhile, Hassan et al. (2018) are of the
perspective that disclosure of such a major data breach must serve as a contributory role to all
cyber risk assessment companies. Business enterprises which typically store employees’ as well
as users’ credit documents must strengthen its data protection systems in order to proficiently
distinguish cyber criminals. However, according to Deshpande, Nair and Shah (2017), one of the
effective ways to acquire ahead of the data infringement is to successfully address the breaching
as a probable event rather than identifying it as an impossible event. Thus organizations must
seek next generation data protection data protection solutions which will retain highly credential
and sensitive information safe.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that effective organizational
protection requires sincere attention from senior level personnel as well as top leadership to
successfully initiate mapping threats within the company. Business decisions must significantly
be leveraged by cyber risks and its potential aftermath. Such implications do not emerge

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automatically but as a society if credit risk assessment companies like Equifax want to advance
and reach success by learning from past errors and the recent massive cyber threat accurate
mandated policy on handling these cyber risks must be efficiently enforced.

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References
Baldwin, D. J., Buckley, J. P., & Slaugh, D. R. (2017). Insuring Against Privacy Claims
Following A Data Breach. Penn St. L. Rev., 122, 683.
Berghel, H. (2017). Equifax and the Latest Round of Identity Theft Roulette. Computer, (12), 72-
76.
Bourdon. B. (2017). The Avoidable Mistakes Executives Continue to Make After a Data
Breach. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/11/the-avoidable-mistakes-executives-
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Deshpande, V. M., Nair, D. M. K., & Shah, D. (2017). Major Web Application Threats for Data
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