By now, you’ve surely heard that Equifax, one of the largest credit reporting companies in the U.S., suffered a huge data breach. How bad was it? Reports say over 143 million sets of personal information may have been lost on U.S. residents alone, including names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and in some cases driver license numbers. Reports say Equifax neglected to patch a known vulnerability in a timely manner, and took even longer to go public with news of the breach. The story is still developing, but it’s shaping up to be one of the most significant security breaches yet.
John Wetzel is head of threat intelligence training at Recorded Future, and he joins us today to help make sense of what happened to Equifax, how it might have been prevented, and what a breach of this size means for all of us.