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Equifax Faces Mounting Costs and Investigations From Breach
Equifax has incurred $87.5 million of expenses stemming from a giant data breach this year and faces dozens of government investigations as a result, the credit reporting company said Thursday.
Equifax disclosed in September that attackers had used a flaw in its website software to extract the personal information of as many as 145.5 million Americans. The stolen data included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s license numbers.
The company has been reeling ever since. Equifax said Thursday that its third-quarter profits fell to $96.3 million, down 27 percent from the same period last year.
Skittish corporate customers have delayed some projects until the company can prove that its systems are secure, Equifax said in a regulatory filing Thursday. Many have asked for security audits, the company said.
While Equifax’s third-quarter sales increased slightly, to $834.8 million, they fell short of analysts’ expectations.
“We recognize that we have an important journey in front of us to regain the trust and confidence of consumers and our business customers,” Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., the company’s interim chief executive, said in a statement.
Mr. Barros was appointed when his predecessor, Richard F. Smith, left the company after the breach.
Equifax said it was facing more than 240 lawsuits seeking class action status, as well as investigations from a plethora of regulatory and law enforcement agencies. All 50 state attorneys general have demanded information, Equifax said, as have the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission and regulators in Britain and Canada.
Officials from the S.E.C. and the United States attorney’s office in Atlanta, where Equifax has its headquarters, have begun investigating stock sales by several Equifax executives in the days after the breach was detected by the company, but before it was publicly revealed — an announcement that sent Equifax shares plunging. Equifax said last week that its internal investigation of the trades had turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.
Equifax said it could not estimate the future expenses of dealing with the breach’s fallout, but they are expected to be “significant.”
The company’s business of selling products and services directly to consumers will take the biggest hit, Equifax said, because it has stopped advertising for new business and is offering free credit monitoring for all American consumers.
But one of Equifax’s fastest-growing businesses — selling employment and payroll data that it has collected on millions of American workers — seemed to have emerged relatively unscathed. Revenue for that unit rose 9 percent in the latest quarter, to $186.4 million.
Equifax said it was still conducting an internal review of the security breach. The examination has already uncovered “two significant deficiencies” in the company’s technology systems that are being remediated, the company said.
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