After the news that 4 members of the Chinese armed forces were indicted by the US Department of Justice for the 2017 Equifax cyberattack, the company has announced details of a $US1 billion+ security and technology transformation project.

In 2017, Equifax, one of the largest consumer credit reporting agencies, experienced a highly publicized data breach which affected over 148 million Americans.  Breached data included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers.

The US Department of Justice recently discovered that the cyberattack was, in fact, a state-sponsored operation by a well-funded and sophisticated arm of the Chinese government.

“We are spending an incremental $US1.25 billion between 2018 and 2020 on enhanced security and technology as part of our EFX 2020 cloud technology transformation, and we have made tremendous progress toward embedding security into everything we do,” said Mark W. Begor, CEO of Equifax.

“Cybercrime is one of the greatest threats facing our nation today, and it is an ongoing battle that every company will continue to face as attackers grow more sophisticated.  Combating this challenge from well-financed nation-state actors that operate outside the rule of law is increasingly difficult. Fighting this cyberwar will require the type of open cooperation and partnership between government, law enforcement and private business that we have experienced firsthand.“

Equifax is working with Active Navigation, a data privacy and governance software provider, to identify, classify, and protect sensitive data assets. The ongoing project, which started in early 2018, is part of the security and technology transformation currently underway at Equifax.

Active Navigation’s Discovery Center, which integrates into large and complex technology stacks, maps data flows and actions data at the scale and performance levels required by global technology companies. Active Navigation’s proprietary file analysis technology provides organizations with a repeatable and defensible solution to keep their data maps accurate and up-to-date.

“Investing in data protection technologies is a key part of our transformation,” said Nick Oldham, chief privacy and data governance officer at Equifax. “Active Navigation has been a good partner for us during our transformation.”

Equifax collects and aggregates information on over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide. Equifax is using Active Navigation’s Discovery Center to identify and delete unnecessary records to reduce its overall surface footprint.

The Discovery Center platform, leveraging a proprietary multi-language GDPR rule set, helps companies index unstructured data and quickly protect millions of records. Discovery Center works at scale on files in place and provides information down to the file level, enabling rapid and informed remediation decisions to be made across any connected repository.

“We’re proud to be a part of Equifax’s technological and data governance transformation,” said Peter Baumann, CEO of Active Navigation. “As a data-driven organization, Equifax understands the need to underpin data privacy and security in everything they do. Our Discovery Center platform is playing a critical role in helping Equifax become a global leader in data-driven insights.”

For more information, visit ActiveNavigation.com and www.equifax.com.