Equifax: Where Perception = Reality, Timing is Everything

Equifax: Where Percepton = Reality, Timing is Everything

This is a follow up to a previous post. Paul Monica’s recent article in CNN:Money indicates that Officers in the Equifax Corporation sold stock shares in the days following Equifax’s data breach.  The article indicates that Equifax became aware of the breach on Saturday, July 29th and thereafter, on Tuesday, August 1st, and Wednesday, August 2nd, three Equifax officers sold shares of Equifax stock.  In looking at the U.S. Securities and Exchange EDGAR system, it seems that John Gamble, CVP & CFO; Joseph Loughran III, President USIS; and Ploder Rodolfo, President Workforce Solutions all sold stock worth nearly $1.9M the week after the breach was “discovered.”

John Gamble: SEC Form 4

Joseph Loughran, III: SEC Form 4

Ploder Rodolfo: SEC Form 4

The article states that Equifax told CNNMoney that the executives “had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred when they made the sales.”

{OPINION}: Business 101: Perception is everything and this article raises a (minimally) two-fold question: (1) is Equifax so incredibly inept that a breach of epic proportions was discovered on Saturday, July 29, and yet on Tuesday, August 1st, key corporate officers still had not been made aware of this?; (2) why did Equifax even respond to the CNNMoney article if they were merely going to skirt the issue and then demonstrate their complete lack of an internal breach notification system?

The optics on this were bad already, a data breach was discovered on July 29th, the impact is upwards of 143M records and the news isn’t released until after the latest news cycle covering Irma was complete on a Thursday evening.  Now it seems Equifax executives had the uncanny good fortune to offload what is soon to be a plummeting stock and net hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

While it is true, that breaches happen even to the most secure systems, how breaches are handled once discovered can have a tremendous impact on consumer trust, goodwill, and ongoing business relationships.  Equifax is going to have to redouble its efforts and work on its PR if it wants to successfully weather this storm.

On the “adding insult to injury” track, below is a screenshot of the Equifax online verification screen to determine if you may have been compromised during their breach.