Equifax has released an official confirmation late yesterday that more than 100,000 Canadians were affected by the cyber attack which targeted its database almost two months ago. The US-based Credit Agency has also assured that it will offer a public update by this weekend on the impact of the data breach which was disclosed to the media on Sept 7th, 2017.
A private cybersecurity agency has been pressed into service to investigate on the breach which includes leakage of names addresses, social insurance numbers and in some cases credit card numbers.
As soon as the data leak details reached to the media on Sept.7 of this year, Equifax remained tight-lipped about the security issue’s impact in Canada.
But on this Monday the company which collects data about customers’ credit history and provides credit checks to a variety of companies has disclosed the above said details to the media for the first time since the hack.
Equifax Canada’s President and General Manager Lisa Nelson have issued an apology to all customers who were affected by the breach. She added that all the customers will be updated about the data breach via email and vows to provide them with free credit monitoring for two full years.
Equifax Canada has also informed the details about the breach to Canada’s Privacy Watchdog on Wednesday last week. And a separate investigation has been taken up by the privacy commissioner from last Friday.
