Are they actually worse than other companies? Or were they just the ones who got caught at it?

Who was paying for the security reviews if they were just going to be ignored? Some management or regulatory process?

A little bit of both. Equifax (and other credit reporting agencies) are subject to an annual audit from the SEC. There were issues being raised from the SEC with Equifax's processes going back to at least 2012. Ernst & Young also had a responsibility of oversight for Equifax's security practices due to acting as Equifax's primary independent auditor with regards to shareholder reporting.

Additionally, Equifax then paid on three separate occasions for external security audits at the direction of upper management (one specifically directed by Smith where the auditors were specifically directed to report the results only to Smith).

I haven't seen enough information to give a positive answer, but only to make conjecture that the external audits were driven by outside pressures; likely coming from the SEC. So the audits were performed, but this was essentially just a formality and management largely disregarded the audit findings.