GAO's Equifax report: Company left private data vulnerable on several fronts

[nitpicker]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/gaos-equifax-report-company-left-private-data-vulnerable-on-several-fronts-2018-09-07

GAO’s Equifax report: Company left private data vulnerable on several fronts

Published: Sept 8, 2018 7:56 a.m. ET

By
Francine McKenna

A new report from a government watchdog concludes that Equifax left information vulnerable on several fronts that led to hackers getting access to the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.

The Government Accountability Office on Friday released its report on the one-year anniversary of the public disclosure at Equifax after being commissioned to write it by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who championed the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee and Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of House Oversight were co-requesters with Warren and Cummings.

The GAO report describes in detail how hackers exploited significant vulnerabilities at EFX, +0.11% to gain access to the sensitive personal information of more than 145 million Americans.

According to the GAO, “Equifax determined that several major factors had facilitated the attackers’ ability to successfully gain access to its network and extract information from databases containing [personally identifiable information]” and that “key factors that led to the breach were in the areas of identification, detection, segmentation, and data governance.”

In addition, according to the GAO report, the lack of restrictions at Equifax on the frequency of database queries allowed the attackers to execute approximately 9,000 such queries without detection by Equifax or its internal or external auditors—many more than would be needed for normal operations.
(snip)

Two Democrats say the report highlights the lack of any enforcement action yet by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, the two agencies responsible for oversight of credit reporting agencies.
(snip)

[nitpicker]

1. Link to the GAO report

https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-559

[Midnight Writer]

2. So, did anything negative happen to Equifax? Did they lose money, go broke, get indicted? Anything?