Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Apologizes For Data Breach, Blames Russians (reuters.com)

Former Yahoo chief executive officer Marissa Mayer apologized today for a pair of massive data breaches at Yahoo and blamed Russian agents on the growing number of incidents involving major U.S. companies. A reader shares a report: "As CEO, these thefts occurred during my tenure, and I want to sincerely apologize to each and every one of our users," she told the Senate Commerce Committee, testifying alongside the interim and former CEOs of Equifax and a senior Verizon Communications executive. "Unfortunately, while all our measures helped Yahoo successfully defend against the barrage of attacks by both private and state-sponsored hackers, Russian agents intruded on our systems and stole our users' data."

Comments

US needs legal liability

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Good luck if you want to hold anyone accountable for any of this. Maybe you have the time and money to slug it out in the courts. Or years to wait for a verdict.

We have some experience with addressing this. Companies can get slapped pretty hard for violating HIPAA---either for improper disclosure or poor security. However the law was written, it is effective in making them think about security properly. A law by itself doesn't guarantee good conduct across the board, but it certainly helps when there are consequences.

If any congressman wants to extend HIPAA-level security requirements to any system that handles the personal information of American citizens, he gets my vote automatically. We should have done it 20 years ago. Better late than never.

Unless there are new rules and new consequences, nothing will change. Wallets and ballots, people.