Jay Clayton, the Chairman of US Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) has been grilled by US lawmakers for a 2016’s cyber attack that infiltrated the agencies corporate filing system. Clayton was criticized for keeping the 2016’s cyber attack under wraps which is against the prevailing data protection laws of United States.
Mr. Clayton, who is a lawyer from New York, revealed the 2016’s cyber attack details to the media early this month which coincided with the news of a massive data breach at Equifax.
Mike Crapo, the Republican Chair of the banking committee said that he was deeply disturbed as soon as he learned that the SEC suffered a cyber breach on its Edgar systems in 2016, and was discovered in a recent review of the financial system by a third party.
Crapo also highlighted the statement of Mr. Clayton which says that he and his staff were unaware of the exact time of the cyber attack. This clearly shows how serious the head of the SEC is when it comes to cyber threats and related defenses.
And as per a report published in Reuters, the cyber attack on SEC’s filing systems occurred during the leadership of Mary Jo White. But since Clayton was holding the chair as a predecessor he was supposed to take the responsibility to disclose the data breach to law enforcement authorities.
Note- EDGAR systems/servers contain critical info of company earnings, share dealings, possible mergers, and acquisitions and other finance-related corporate activities. If and when hackers get hold of such data, they can trade all this info on the dark web to become millionaires.
Jay Clayton will have to attend the second hearing of Senate Banking Committee early next week, after which a decision to pronounce a legal course of action against him will be taken.
