With the news of Equifax being hacked my heart sunk a little with the realization that my information may have once again been lost, originally done so by the Government of Canada.
That initial feeling soon turned to anger when I saw that not only were clients having their information stolen over a two month period but that Equifax knew about the hack for an additional month and a half before making the news public.
That’s a over a month where its clients could have been looking into their financial records and setting up safe guards to prevent possible financial ruin.
I won’t even touch on the fact that it took so long to be discovered, one would think that a company previously worth so much would have been ensuring that the best security measures were in place.
The whole situation to me reveals something very wrong and out dated about the insurances we have in place as technology makes our information more and more accessible and vulnerable.
The truth of the matter is technology has always been a double-edged sword because as we gain strength through the tools it offers we lose control due to our dependency on it.
Unfortunately, we are only ever really forced to acknowledge this after things go wrong, as with most things in life.
Planning on worst-case scenarios may seem like fear mongering to some but it needs to be done in order to prepare for when things do go wrong.
With more and more of our private information being put online through various servers, accessible from anywhere in the world, we need to be holding the parties responsible for its safe keeping more accountable when something goes wrong.
There should be no reason why a company like Equifax is allowed to sit on something that could be so devastating to so many people (143 million in the US alone) and not have to share that information with the public as soon as it’s discovered.
If the top executives had enough time to sell stocks worth almost $2 million, those same top executives had enough time to put procedures into play that would notify all clients of the breach and recommend what course of action they should be taking.
This company, just like many, are responsible for information that in the wrong hands could be used to devastate and financially ruin people’s lives, yet the day after what happened is finally made public clients are expected to wait on hold or for a letter coming in the mail.
The company is responsible for what happened and it’s that company that should be reaching out and making the effort to rectify their mistake.
Yes it’s a big company and yes they are responsible for a lot of people’s information, but if they can’t handle the aftermath of their error than they should never have been in business in the first place.
When action grows unprofitable, gather information;
when information grows unprofitable, sleep. ― Ursula K. Le Guin