Former Equifax CEO Blames Breach On One Individual Who Failed To Deploy Patch (techcrunch.com)

Equifax's recently departed CEO is blaming the largest data breach in history on a single person who failed to deploy a patch. TechCrunch reports: Hackers exposed the Social Security numbers, drivers licenses and other sensitive info of 143 million Americans earlier this summer by exploiting a vulnerability in Apache's Struts software, according to testimony heard today from former CEO Richard Smith. However, a patch for that vulnerability had been available for months before the breach occurred. Now several top Equifax execs are being taken to task for failing to protect the information of millions of U.S. citizens. In a live stream before the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce committee, Smith testified the Struts vulnerability had been discussed when it was first announced by CERT on March 8th.

Smith said when he started with Equifax 12 years ago there was no one in cybersecurity. The company has poured a quarter of a billion dollars into cybersecurity in the last three years and today boasts a 225 person team. However, Smith had an interesting explainer for how this easy fix slipped by 225 people's notice -- one person didn't do their job. "The human error was that the individual who's responsible for communicating in the organization to apply the patch, did not," Smith, who did not name this individual, told the committee.

Comments

I smell bullshit.

[Hylandr]

If .25Bn has been invested then there's sure as hell no process that could have allowed a single critical patch go unchecked as described. There's teams, or should be teams of people watching these things.

I smell a really shitty cop-out excuse.

Re:I smell bullshit.

[rahvin112]

You missed the best part, 3 years ago, they didn't even have a security department. At least according to his throw the wage slave under the bus testimony. He's distracting you with this tale of rouge employee while dropping a bombshell you didn't even notice.

3 years ago the company responsible for approving credit for all americans had NO information security department. According to the CEO's testimony they had zero budget and not a single employee dedicated to security of their IT networks. That's grounds for jailing him IMO.

Human Error???

[Moblaster]

Anyone who has worked with sensitive processes (esp computer security processes) knows that relying on one person for a mission-critical function is not a "human error" - it's a process failure. If this person's communication job was that essential, they should have had a team-based process in place with multiple individuals charged with making sure the process got executed, backed up by computerized records and nag alerts if not done. Seems like this "human error" would have happened if the person had gone on vacation, gotten fired, or went off their meds. That's not a human error. That's execs failing to make sure they build a resilient security process. Quarter billion in expenditure won't buy common sense, it seems.

Re: Human Error???

[Mr D from 63]

There's a thing called independent verification that might have helped. Guess its that one guys fault that they didn't practice that.

Ah yes, the blame game

[quonset]

"It was his fault. That's why I sold my company stock when I found out about the breach rather than inform anyone except the other folks in the executive suite."

Wow, that's scummy

[JohnFen]

"The human error was that the individual who's responsible for communicating in the organization to apply the patch, did not,"

What a scummy thing to say, and he doesn't even realize that the statement makes Equifax look even worse.

With a couple of hundred people on the security team, the idea that it's a single person's responsibility to tell everyone to apply a patch is ludicrous. If it's true, then that's institutional incompetence.

I've been working in computer security for years, and do you know what I and all of my coworkers do? We keep up on computer security developments, particularly newly discovered vulnerabilities. And we discuss them. And send emails about them.

Even if the one team (not individual) who is responsible for ensuring that our own systems are patched for some reason fails to do that job, there is exactly zero chance that this would go unnoticed.

If that's not how it works at Equifax, that's the fault of Equifax, not some single individual.

So what you're saying is

[rsilvergun]

Your entire operation is one under paid and overworked sys admin away from disaster? Did I get that right?