Name: Former Equifax CEO apologizes to Congress, blames hack on human error
Uploaded: 2017-10-03T18:03:00.000Z
Duration: 1 min 2 s
Description: Richard Smith, the former chairman and CEO of Equifax, testifies to Congress regarding a data breach that affected nearly half of the US population. The personal data of 145.5 million Americans was stolen due to an employee that didn't patch software and a scanner program that didn't detect the known vulnerability, he says.

The criminal hack happened on my watch and as CEO I am ultimately responsible and I take full responsiblity. I'm here today to say each and every person effected by this breach, [BLANK_AUDIO] that I'm truly and deeply sorry for what happened. I've talked to many consumers, I read your letters, and EQIUFAX is committed to make it whole for you. We know now that this criminal attack was made possible because a combination of human error, and technological error. The human error Involved the failure to apply a software patch to our dispute portal in March of 2017. The technological error involved a scanner which failed to detect that vulnerability on that particular portal. Both errors have since been addressed.