2017 Data Breach Will Cost Equifax at Least $1.38 Billion

2017 Data Breach Will Cost Equifax at Least $1.38 Billion
Company agrees to set aside a minimum of $380.5 million as breach compensation and spend another $1 billion on transforming its information security over the next five years. The 147 million US consumers affected by the breach have one week from today to file a claim.

The final minimum tab for Equifax's failure to patch a known web application security flaw—that later proved to be the root cause of the company's disastrous data breach in 2017—is over $1.38 billion.


The US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia Monday granted final approval of a settlement arrived at last July between the Federal Trade Commission and Equifax. Under the settlement, Equifax has agreed to set aside at least $380.5 million to settle claims related to its 2017 breach. The company has also agreed to spend at least $1 billion on information security and related technologies over a period of five years.


Personal data, including Social Security Numbers belonging to some 147 million US consumers was compromised in the breach. Equifax has blamed the incident on a buggy component in the open-source Apache Struts framework for which a patch was available at the time of the breach.


Money from the $380.5 million fund will be used to pay for credit monitoring services and compensation of up to $20,000 to individuals who can show documented out-of-pocket expenses directly related to the breach. The court-approved settlement allows individuals to claim up to 20 hours—at $25 per hour—for any time they might have had to spend taking preventative measures to protect their data against fraud and misuse following the breach. Up to 10 of those hours can be self-certified and requires no documentation.


Equifax will also provide up to four years of free three-bureau credit monitoring and iden ..

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