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Former Equifax CEO Blames Breach On One Individual Who Failed To Deploy Patch (techcrunch.com) 255

Posted by BeauHD from the under-investigation dept.
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.
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Former Equifax CEO Blames Breach On One Individual Who Failed To Deploy Patch More

Former Equifax CEO Blames Breach On One Individual Who Failed To Deploy Patch

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  • Ob (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:43PM (#55304449) Homepage Journal

    He's Spartacus!

    • Human Error??? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moblaster ( 521614 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:47PM (#55304477)
      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.

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

        What carefully parsed weasel words.

        So the patch had passed testing, but wasn't applied? The only alternative is that someone has to instruct them specifically to start testing every patch in their ecosystem.

        Shouldn't someone be seeing a report of all unapplied patches and how old they are? Yell at the testing group if they age too much?

      • Re:Human Error??? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by msauve ( 701917 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:10PM (#55304619)
        "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."

        Absolutely. Human redundancy is just as important as network/system redundancy. If the organization isn't set up to continue working even if someone gets hit by a bus, that's a management failure. It's not a single individual. Who was responsible for checking that the work was done as required?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Exactly... You should have defense in depth, not only to counter someone who fails to apply a patch but also to try and mitigate against attacks against vulnerabilities for which there is no patch.

      • Spot on. If your system relies on a single point of failure for critical functions you have a serious problem; "Human Error" is a convent excuse to avoid finding and firing the real problem.

      • It's even worse (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PatientZero ( 25929 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @07:38PM (#55305079)

        Any number of reasonable things could have caused the patch to be missed, but you'd expect $250M spent over three years to provide a few more security processes beyond, "Fred forgot to apply the patch." The attackers were spreading through their systems over several months without detection.

        Also, way to lead from behind. Every corporate officer I've met has shared one tenet with all others: they are responsible for everything that their team does, good and bad. If some employee several rungs down the corporate ladder fails, it's because the leadership above them failed to hire or train them correctly or put in the right processes.

      • Absolutely.

        Not to mention the comment about them just now getting serious on cybersecurity in the last 3 years...your very company exists on critical/sensitive information handling, security should have been #1 priority from the git go. He's making it sound like they are just a small company trying to do what it can.

        Sounds like a senior dev ops nija (that was probably the IT golden boy) just got thrown under a bus...

  • Nice to have Cyber Security Team (Score:5, Interesting)

    by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:45PM (#55304461) Journal
    Sucks that you don't do configuration management.

  • I smell bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hylandr ( 813770 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:46PM (#55304463)

    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. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:16PM (#55304649)

      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.

      • Re:I smell bullshit. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Hylandr ( 813770 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:21PM (#55304681)

        I caught that part but was much more incensed by the lame attempt to parry liability.

        • More like criminal than lame. After all, they are saying that ONE MAN was responsible for deploying patches on systems worldwide.* That must be one overworked, exhausted zombie of an employee. After all, he is apparently a team of one, with no assistance, supervision or accountability until the shit hits the fan.

          The other 224 were responsible for making sure the coffee maker got cleaned once a month, along with, as mentioned by an earlier AC...writing his schedule.

          *Equifax employs approximately 9900 employe

      • 3 years ago the company responsible for approving credit for all Americans ...

        Technically, Equifax and the other credit bureaus don't approve credit to anyone, they simply provide a centralized source for credit information. Individual lenders make approval decisions based on this information - which is available to, and can be challenged by, the borrower.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I agree. Full liability with his personal fortune and significant prison time. How the hell can you run a company this size and with data this critical without a competent IT security division? Negligence does not get more gross than this.

      • Okay, as much as I hate to appear like I'm defending Equifax in any way... You simply can't really make such a statement of fact like that from the information given so far.

        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.

        All we can infer for certain is that sometime between 12 years ago and 3 years ago a dedicated cybersecurity team was formed, and what the last three years combined budget was.

        That doesn't really mean there were no security-focused employees before that, of course, as the job was probably rolled into the general IT budget and operational

    • Re:I smell bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)

      by dszd0g ( 127522 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @07:16PM (#55304935) Homepage

      It's either utter incompetence or bullshit.

      At the enterprise level and especially for PCI compliance there should be 3 independent levels where this could have been caught: 1) applying the patch, 2) monitoring patch compliance, 3) vulnerability scanning. Organizations that really care about security also have a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or other Intrusion Detection System (IDS) or Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) which would have been a fourth level that could have prevented this attack.

      Blaming this attack on one person when there should have at least been 3 levels of prevention with at least 3 different teams involved is stupid.

      1) Patch Management Solution: In the enterprise, this should be a software solution (like Quest KACE or IBM BigFix type solutions) that monitor the patches on each endpoint and apply patches on a schedule after they are tested. Most organizations have a 30 day patch cycle although critical remote vulnerabilities like this should have been escalated sooner.

      What would have been reasonably possible is for the person responsible for escalating the patch to apply sooner than 30 days could have missed escalating it. However, the normal 30 day cycle then should have caught it.

      a) Patch application
      b) Patch monitoring

      In some organizations there is one team that applies the patches (and is usually involved in testing the upcoming patches) another team that monitors the patch levels. In other organizations they are the same team although there should still be independent checks for application and monitoring.

      2) Vulnerability Scanning: Especially anything that is visible to the Internet should get vulnerability scanned at least every 30 days. A decent remote vulnerability scanning software should have picked this up. Tenable's Nessus which is one of the industry standard vulnerability scanners tests for CVE-2017-5638 which is the vulnerability that effected Equifax. Nessus started testing for it on March 14th.

      3) Web Application Firewall: Web Application Firewalls will block known attacks before they hit the application. A decent WAF should block known vulnerabilities such as the one that hit Equifax as long as it was up to date. That said a lot of companies I have worked with tend to run WAFs in intrusion detection mode instead of intrusion prevention mode due to false positives and not wanting to block legitimate traffic. Some companies I have worked with are much better than others at going through the alarms, how quickly they respond to alarms, and filtering out the false positives so that the alarms are easier to manage. Usually for Web applications you will have a WAF rather than a general purpose IDS/IPS as the WAF will have access to the unencrypted traffic although there are ways to have IDS/IPS products have access to the Web server private certificates to decrypt the traffic.

    • "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."

      The .25Bn and teams of people sounds like the problem to me. Like in every other large enterprise environment that leads to a whole lot of procedures and massive dysfunctional security theater. The security people want everything silo'd, disconnected, and to tie the hands of ops in every way possible and
    • You have missed an even better story. Due to their stellar job at keeping our person information secure, Equifax was awarded a no bid contract for personal identification for the IRS [fbo.gov]. Oh man, now we are really f*%ked.

    • 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.

      Spending lots of money does not guarantee a good process. Heck it could be evidence that the process was poor from the beginning.

      I smell a really shitty cop-out excuse.

      I don't think so. I have no doubt in my mind that Equifax are truly incompetent on every level including the ability to come up with a process that is resistant to such human error.

      This isn't a "cop-out excuse". This is evidence of severe missmanagement and their shareprice deserves to be slaughtered as a result.

  • the tree must be watered (Score:3)

    by retchdog ( 1319261 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:47PM (#55304475) Journal

    To quote Thomas Jefferson, "The Tree of Bare Fucking Minimum Standards of Responsibility and Decorum must be refreshed from time to time with blood."

  • Buggy whips are gone, but the need for horsehoe nails remains.

  • Ah yes, the blame game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:48PM (#55304483)

    "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."

    • "i'm getting a killer golden parachute because i'm worth that much. Really guys, they wouldn't give me this much money to retire if I wasn't. Ergo, totes not my fault, and now it's not my problem either"

      • well, you see, CEOs are paid so much money for the singular and unique value they offer to a company faced with challenges only few have ever surmounted. it is necessary to pay a large salary because the rewards he can bring are so large that there is a lot of competition. and apparently even more money if he fucks it up, because hey he deserves it.

        that last part is sorta weird, but as long as you don't ever think it even remotely applies to you, you'll be fine, pleb.

  • Wow, that's scummy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:48PM (#55304495)

    "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.

    • I guess he never takes sick days or vacation...
    • IT people are not well liked. Maybe it's because lots of us are nerds. Maybe it's because the only time people interact with us is when something is broken. But either way, we're a perfect scapegoat in any company. Always have been too.

      Regular people don't like us. They never have. When computers made it so they had to depend on us that didn't make them like us. It lead to resentment and deepened their hate.

      Mark my words, this'll work like a charm.

  • huh? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fotis Georgatos ( 3006465 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:50PM (#55304501)

    bollocks. Yes, that.

    Any security organization which relies on a single individual's action or inaction to remain in good standing is simply fairytale.
    Every good process which involves a human in the loop, should always ensure that at least one more is present to enforce check-and-balance objectives.
    There is a good reason why all commercial flights have two pilots as a default.

    Let me state this: when you see management pointing one single downstream individual for such an event, there are at least TWO levels of management at fault.

    • Any security organization which relies on a single individual's action or inaction to remain in good standing is simply fairytale.

      Fairytales are just that. However there are plenty of truly incompetent organisations.

      A lot of people have called this as an "excuse" or "scapegoating" or "bollocks". I call it evidence of top down severe missmanagement of the company.

  • Such BS (Score:5, Informative)

    by gordona ( 121157 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:50PM (#55304505) Homepage
    The buck stops with the CEO! If the CEO knew about vulnerability that needed patching, he should have been expecting a report regarding the application of the patch. If he didn't get that he should have come down on the admin or system owner for not installing it. Unless of course that wasn't in the security policy in which case it still falls on the back of the CEO. DUE CARE and DUE DILIGENCE! Non existent.

    • My, aren't you the naive summer child.

      The modern CEO is never to blame and, even if they are, they get their bonus and a golden parachute and cash out their stock options on the way out. If they were particularly bad, they might lose a some or all of their final yearly bonus, but they'll still walk away with more wealth than any of the 99% will earn in their entire lives.

  • $225 million isn't much (Score:5, Informative)

    by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:51PM (#55304517)

    The company has poured a quarter of a billion dollars into cybersecurity in the last three years and today boasts a 225 person team.

    Spending $225 million over 3 years isn't really that much when you consider the type and amount of personal data Equifax has on us.

    JP Morgan Chase spent $500 million in 2016 alone [forbes.com], Bank of America spent $400 million on cyber security in 2016 although they have an unlimited cyber security budget [forbes.com], Citibank's cyber security budget topped $400 million and Wells Fargo spends roughly $250 million per year. [forbes.com]

    • Re:$225 million isn't much (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @07:07PM (#55304895)

      All of those you cite are banks with numerous branches, subject to robbery and internal theft. They have security cameras which send their video over the internet, all branches are connected to multiple financial networks including their own, and lots of mundane paperwork is computerized. Securing all of these things counts as 'cybersecurity' and goes beyond what Equifax has to deal with, for the most part. If someone breaches/hacks Equifax, and they can ignore it/cover it up, then it's business as usual, so why spend money on it? It's only once the mandatory disclosure laws went into effect they took cybersecurity seriously.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Not to mention comparing three companies that each have over 200,000 employees and $60bn to $90bn turnover to one that has 10,000 employees and less than $4bn turnover.

        Proportionally Equifax appear to be spending substantially more on information security than those banks.

    • It doesn't seem like great value for money considering the results it obtained. If they had "put it all on red" they apparently would have had the same level of security and a fair chance of having a $450MM fund to compensate the poor bastards who's information they held hostage.

  • Failure of way more than one person (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:51PM (#55304519) Homepage

    Failing to apply the patch would be the failure of that one person to order the patch applied, plus the failure of his superior to notice that an action item hadn't been handled, plus a failure of the security team to notice that a ticket hadn't been completed, plus the failure of the head of the security team to notice his subordinates had uncompleted tickets sitting there. All this stuff should be tracked, and where I work it is and we have daily status meetings where stuff like this gets asked about, and development team managers and product managers have weekly status meetings where lack of progress on tickets and what needs done about it is a standard agenda item.

    Accountability means managers and executives are just as accountable for work getting done or not getting done as low-level employees are expected to be.

    • Re:Failure of way more than one person (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:19PM (#55304669) Homepage Journal

      Failing to apply the patch would be the failure of that one person to order the patch applied, plus the failure of his superior to notice that an action item hadn't been handled, plus a failure of the security team to notice that a ticket hadn't been completed, plus the failure of the head of the security team to notice his subordinates had uncompleted tickets sitting there. All this stuff should be tracked, and where I work it is and we have daily status meetings where stuff like this gets asked about, and development team managers and product managers have weekly status meetings where lack of progress on tickets and what needs done about it is a standard agenda item.

      Plus a failure of their regular security auditing process to detect that a machine was running a version of software below the minimum allowed version. All this stuff should be detected programmatically in a company that size. This was not a failure of one person. This was a complete failure of the entire security organization at every level, which usually points to either a complete lack of leadership, inadequate budget to hire sufficient qualified staff, or (more likely) all of the above.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Hylandr ( 813770 )

        By this time it's very obvious it's nothing to do with a security team.

        This is just smoke from the CEO trying to protect his ass.

    • It's complete garbage excuse. It's not like somebody reads sit on Slashdot and gets an idea to apply a patch. There are bulletins like this https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/b... [us-cert.gov] that you compare with your inventory. When you find something you open a ticket.... there are probably ways automate this. (I am not a cyber guy)

  • Struts being an application framework... (Score:5, Informative)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:53PM (#55304533) Journal

    Struts is an application framework, which means it is an application dependency. That means that every Struts-using application within Equifax would have needed to be upgraded, to be tested at least on the new version. That is the job of more than one person!

    It is possible that Equifax's application servers (Tomcat, JBoss, etc) were configured with Struts being provided at the container level, but even that would be a full upgrade of multiple application servers within the company - a platforms team responsibility. However I suspect Struts would have been incorporated into the application itself at build time (as a dependency library).

    I do not know how many applications Equifax's systems are made up of, but certainly the company I work for has dozens or hundreds to build up a trading platform (or two or three!). I imagine it is similar at Equifax.

    I also cannot imagine a security team of 225 people having just one person be responsible to notifying and reminding of critical library vulnerabilities and updates for the entire business.

    This smells of "VW Single Rogue Engineer" to me. Clearly bullshit.

  • who was too busy posting on /.

  • "The buck stops somewhere else" (Score:3)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:59PM (#55304569)

    Sign on the desk of CxO's everywhere

    (contrast this with the US Navy, where the captain of the Fitzgerald was relieved, even though he was not on deck when the collision occurred and in fact was almost killed by the accident. Subsequently, the Navy relieved several higher ranking officers, including Flag officers, for supervisory failures.)

  • So what you're saying is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:02PM (#55304585)
    Your entire operation is one under paid and overworked sys admin away from disaster? Did I get that right?

  • Somebody in Management decided to hire a totally incompetent and unqualified CSO. Nice omission there Mr. BS CEO.

  • Yep, one single bad it guy.... (Score:3)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:10PM (#55304617)
    Reminds me of the time 'a couple of rogue engineers [google.com] for the whole VW emissions fiasco. I think handsome bonuses are in the works due to management for uncovering this subterfuge.

  • The Ex-CEO, talking about the guys who cashed in their stock, said (from TFA):

    I’ve know these individual for up to 12 years. They’re men of integrity.

    First, his comments about the "one individual" demonstrates that he himself isn't a man of integrity, so his vouching for them means nothing.

    Second, "men of integrity"? Hahahahahahaha!

  • When I was in grad school one of my professors talked about his. Many weak leaders, when faced by a crisis, will respond with a form of "A small man must die," instead of taking responsibility for the weakness in leadership and design that allowed the crisis to evolve in the first place.

    • Yes, this is true. One of the signs of someone who lacks integrity is that they finger-point when the shit hits the fan.

      In this particular case, though, I think it's worse than just finger-pointing. I think he's straight-up lying.

  • Hope the scapegoat got paid off too! (Score:3)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:28PM (#55304711)

    Expecting the CEO to know _anything_ about what goes on in the IT department is expecting too much. Executives have no clue what's going on outside of the boardroom, and the only time they ever get any sort of information is from management consultants or the odd 'red alert' that bubbles up to the CFO/CIO/COO/CSO. There is absolutely zero chance that the CEO of Equifax has any idea what patch level of Apache Struts is running on their Internet-facing services.

    I wonder if he just went to the CIO and said, "give me a name, anyone remotely responsible for patching, so I can say I fired someone over this." I've never had it happen to me, but I have worked with people who were scapegoats in a major incident. Sucks when you're the one holding the bag...

  • what a bs. (Score:3)

    by kiviQr ( 3443687 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:35PM (#55304753)
    blame one person for no security. Company with that data should assume their webserver will get hacked and act accordingly by implementing multiple layers of security. Web server should have been in DMZ with limited view to data (and no access to sensitive data). That is 101 security. $225m/3y where did that go? To an audit that showed nothing?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mentil ( 1748130 )

      They DID have multiple layers of security. The highest one was 'sell the stock before disclosing the breach."
      Oh wait you meant data security. Nevermind.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cederic ( 9623 )

      Who the fuck even deploys struts on a web server.

      implementing multiple layers of security

      Do you have even the slightest bit of evidence that they didn't?

  • Miserable little fuck (Score:5, Funny)

    by satan666 ( 398241 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @06:39PM (#55304771) Homepage

    What a miserable, no good, lying, sniveling, double crossing, douchebag, fuckface, fucktard, dickwad lying little bitch.
    From his resignation letter:
    "I'm outta here suckers! Let me throw a few of you worms under the bus on my way out. Not my fault. Fuck you and goodnight."
    Love, dickwad in charge, Ret.
    P.S. Bitch better have my moneyyyy!

  • "God, What An Ass-Hole!"
  • Who is then the person who checks that person's work? And the person who is in charge of creating procedures and checks to detect quickly if one person didn't do the job? Or the various people in charge to check on password security? Those who monitor data streams and stop any data dump to a destination not on the approved list? That was a collective failure. Plenty of people just didn't give a damn.
  • And the scapegoat is named.

  • How could a single person be responsible for this, with nobody assigned to verify? No redundancy or assistance whatsoever? For something so important?

    They need to find out who is responsible for setting things up so stupidly.

  • In my security enclave, I automatically run patches on test systems as soon as they are released, I don't even have to do anything and monitors would let me know as soon as a critical event occurs.

    And then all I have to do is move the patches from the testing channel to production and they get deployed, but even that is something that could be scripted or automated if the testing doesn't fail.

    I literally spend less than 1% of my time on patching systems anymore and I manage almost 200 of them by myself.

  • Engineers Should Pay Attention to This (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you work in engineering, you need to see the writing on the wall. No longer are you going to be indemnified for mistakes you make at work, even if you are forced to make them by bad management policy or lack of basic resources. No longer will the penalty for grievous error be a simple firing.

    Face the music. If you make a mistake that causes what ends up being a tortious harm, you are going to jail.

    • This is why, if you work at a place that doesn't engage in even the most basic of engineering best practices, you should quit that job and find one that isn't actively terrible.

  • Who tolerated an environment where there was no concern for the security of the data they collected on all of us.

    That's the one person who is responsible. Not the scapegoat he is pointing at.

  • Like any CEO (Score:3)

    by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @08:33PM (#55305351) Homepage

    Any good stuff that happens I did, give me a big bonus. Any bad stuff that happens, blame. The old saying *hit rolls downhill has never been truer.

  • And that is a leadership failure. If you do this right, for each critical role, there is one person that does the change, one that verifies it has been done and and at least one that can take either role if one of the others is sick or on vacation.

    Anyways, in the end it is _always_ the CEO that is responsible. This person is a coward and unfit for a leadership position, i.e. typical large-company CEO material in this sad world we live in.

  • If the security of all that data relies on one patch being applied, then that is yet another colossal failure by Equifax. For something with this sort of impact, there should be multiple layers of safeguards not just patching a web server. There were a long line of failures here, not just a missing patch.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Yeah I call BS, not as if we've never seen this kind of scapegoating but it's still annoying....

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