(Finance) – The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom has Equifax finedone of the largest credit monitoring agencies, for £11,164,400 for failing to manage and monitor the security of UK consumer data that it had outsourced to its US-based parent company.
In 2017, Equifax’s parent company, Equifax Incwas subjected to one of the largest cybersecurity breaches in history. Hackers were able to access the personal data of around 13.8 million UK consumers because Equifax outsourced the data to Equifax Inc’s servers in the US for processing.
The cyber attack and unauthorized access to data were “entirely preventable“, the FCA argued, noting that Equifax did not regard its relationship with the parent company as an outsourcing. As a result, it failed to provide sufficient oversight over how the data submitted was adequately managed and protected.
Therese Chambers, Joint Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA, said: “Financial firms hold customer data that is very attractive to criminals. They have a duty to keep it safe and Equifax has failed to do so. compounded this failure with how they mishandled their response to the data breach“.