Equifax was aware of the breach 6 weeks prior, Pennsylvania AG says
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is leading a national multi-state investigation into the Equifax data breach that may have impacted 143 million U.S. consumers.
During an interview with FOX Business’ Neil Cavuto of "Cavuto: Coast-to-Coast," Shapiro said Equifax was aware of the data breach six weeks before it was disclosed.
“I want to get at the heart of how the breach happen? Why did it take them so long to notify the public and since they notified the public to add insult to injury, they made it harder for consumers to go and protect their data,” he said.
Shapiro said the bipartisan investigation involves over 30 states and is intended to make Equifax change their behavior to help consumers across the United States.
“This is a massive data breach. There’s a lot of questions that we are going to get answered in the course of this investigation and we gotta protect consumers,” he added.
Equifax ranks fifth in the largest U.S. data breaches and the company is one of three major credit-reporting agencies.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General said ultimately the corporate behavior of companies who utilize consumer data needs to be reformed.
“We want to make sure that our data--the American people’s data--is protected no matter and that’s part of what we are hopefully going to do here in this investigation,” he said.