Governor Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Letitia James today announced that New York is holding Equifax Inc. accountable for the 2017 data breach that exposed the sensitive financial and personal information of millions of Americans, including 8.5 million New Yorkers.
The settlement stems from separate investigations by the Department of Financial Services and the New York Attorney General's Office into the credit rating agency and two of its subsidiaries, Equifax Information Services LLC and Equifax Consumer Services LLC.
Under the settlement, the companies will pay a fine of $10 million to DFS, $9.2 million to the New York Attorney General's Office as part of $175 million to Multi-State Attorney Generals including New York, and Equifax has committed up to $425 million to the consumer restitution fund.
"Credit rating agencies have a responsibility to safeguard consumers' financial and personal information, and this egregious data breach and the agency's response was completely unacceptable," Governor Cuomo said. "In New York we are sending a clear message to these agencies that they will be held accountable if they leave consumers' private data vulnerable to exposure, and we will continue our rigorous oversight of these agencies to ensure New Yorkers are protected in the future."
Attorney General Letitia James said, "Equifax put profits over privacy and greed over people, and must be held accountable to the millions of people they put at risk. This company's ineptitude, negligence, and lax security standards endangered the identities of half the U.S. population. Now it's time for the company to do what's right and not only pay restitution to the millions of victims of their data breach, but also provide every American who had their highly sensitive information accessed with the tools they need to battle identity theft in the future."
Click here for the full announcement.
Source: The Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
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