Equifax (EFX) Inc. has recently reached a deal with 8 states aiming to avoid future breaches. What about you? How are you going to better protect your business? Do you have a reliable system to prevent chargebacks? Just read the article to know more about all this.
Equifax Data Breach: Prevent Chargebacks
Equifax, the credit reporting giant, is for increasing its data security efforts after the famous data breach of personal information called the attention of state regulators. Because of the massive data breach that occurred in 2017, the credit bureau space got unfavorable attention.
Attackers got access to personal information like names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and even some credit card numbers, as well as driver’s license numbers. Almost 147.9 million Americans became victims of the data breach. In fact, it was the largest exposure of personal information in history.
Equifax was criticized for not only having no success in preventing the breach, but also for publicizing what had happened after only more than 5 weeks. Since fall 2017, Equifax has applied a number of changes in its executive suite. Also, the bureau has also announced plans concerning substantial investments aimed at upgrading security.
Overall, credit bureaus use a business model that’s relatively simple and attractive. What do they do? Well, they take consumer credit information from lenders and other sources and form the best possible complete picture of consumers’ credit history based on this data. Then, they sell this data back to lenders, as well as other businesses interested in it. FICO, the most popular scoring system in the US, uses this data for its scoring system to provides an overall quantitative rating on the consumer.
Equifax Preventing Future Data Breaches: Prevent Chargebacks
Government regulators and law enforcement officials are still investigating Equifax’s data safeguards. The bodies have been looking into the case include the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as others.
By the way, are you a merchant dealing with chargebacks? How are you going to fight them? In fact, there won’t be anything challenging for you if you work with a reputable credit card processing company like eMerchantBroker.com. EMB, voted the nation’s top high risk processor, provides exceptional merchant services to business owners so to help them grow their business.
eMerchantBroker.com offers Chargeback Shield that’s developed to help merchants prevent chargebacks without any difficulty. Chargeback Shield can be described as a mitigation tool that can help you fight 1 in 4 chargebacks.
Moreover, eMerchantBroker.com has partnership with Verifi and Ethoca, thanks to which, you can enjoy excellent resolution of credit card transaction disputes. Besides, EMB has an A+ rating with the BBB and an A rating with Card Payment Options.
Equifax has entered into an agreement with 8 states that’ll require the credit reporting agency to take stronger security measures in place to prevent future data breaches. These states include Alabama, California, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Texas.
Particularly, regulators from Texas, California, New York, and 5 other states have signed a consent order with Equifax. The agreement consists of 8 pages and doesn’t include any financial penalties. However, according to the agreement, Equifax must take various measures for the purpose of preventing future data breaches.
Specifically, the order includes certain steps to be taken by the credit bureau. For example, the bureau must conduct security audits at least once a year, developing data protection policies and guides (in a written form), keeping its outside technology vendors under precise monitoring, and bettering its software patch management controls.
As Equifax has mentioned, the hackers accessed its systems, using a known software flaw that hadn’t been fixed for months. Now, if Equifax fails to keep any of its new promises, regulators in the above-mentioned states are allowed to take punitive action.
According to an Equifax spokesperson, the company has already completed a significant number of steps under the consent order. As the spokesperson noted, the majority of the states’ findings already make up part of the company’s remediation plans.
*Chargeback Shield is not an insurance service. EMB does not sell insurance and Chargeback Shield is not insurance; it is an alert system.