Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of U.S. Criminal Probe

Re:Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of U.S. Criminal Probe by guelo on Monday September 18, 2017 @12:40PM (#15277361)

In the timeline of events that Equifax released [1] it says that they took the web app down on July 30 and contacted an external cybersecurity firm on August 2nd. The managers unloaded their stock from 7/31 to 8/2.

It doesn't sound believable to me that the managers could be unaware of the hiring of an external security firm, or that the company had shut down one of their major web applications.

[1] https://investor.equifax.com/news-and-events/news/2017/09-15...

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Re:Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of U.S. Criminal Probe by bodz on Monday September 18, 2017 @01:33PM (#15277825)

None of the managers had anything to do with or were in the chain of command of the security team, so it's entirely possible they had absolutely no idea about the breach until long after 8/2.

The CFO is the one that is a little iffy, because the CFO might be involved in the hiring of the external firm. However, having worked for security consulting firms, it's also entirely possible that the CISO is given a blank check for this type of stuff without having to get CFO approval. I've worked in plenty of organizations doing cybersecurity work where the C-suite (including CIO, CFO, etc) was completely unaware we are there because they don't have to rubber stamp every single transaction.

It's also a possibility that the 8/2 date on which they "contacted" the firm was just when discussions started between the two parties, and it might have been a few days before a contract was ironed out enough to involve the CFO or anyone else.

There's a bunch of other possibilities/scenarios in which I think it's entirely believable that they didn't know. It's shady and worthy of investigation, yes, but I'm not willing to convict them just yet.

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