Should Equifax board members be sacked over the data breach?

Should Equifax board members be sacked over the data breach? According to a recent shareholder’s meeting, the answer is reportedly “no”.

Despite the monumental Equifax data breach that occurred last year – an action our Data Leak Lawyers are pursuing on behalf of a number of victims – shareholders have reportedly voted to keep board members in.

It’s common for a number of high-level jobs to be lost following huge data breach scandals like the Equifax one, but in this case, the directors appear to have the backing of the shareholders.

Millions of people were affected by the Equifax data breach scandal, with some 700,000 located here in the UK. Despite the scale and severity of the breach that stemmed from a security patch not being updated and not being picked up on for several months, leaving their data exposed, Equifax shareholders reportedly voted to re-elect all the company’s board members.

We understand there was some resistance, but 64% of the votes were in favour of keeping the likes of Chairman Mark Feidler, the successor to former Chairman, Richard Smith, who resigned after the data breach broke. Two other board members who were on Equifax’s technology committee at the time of the breach, John McKinley and Mark Templeton, were also reportedly re-elected.

It seems clear that bosses should be held accountable for a data breach, especially given the scale of this one, and the fact it was entirely preventable. The question now is whether enough people have been held accountable for the disaster.

About the Equifax data breach action

Given that the Equifax data breach was entirely preventable, we are confident we will win the action we have initiated against them for a group of victims here in the UK. Our Data Leak Lawyers represent volumes of victims claiming in several data breach actions we have initiated, and we are big believers that data controllers should be held accountable for their failings, and data breach victims should be entitled to damages for the distress and loss that can be caused by a data breach.

As GDPR looms – coming into force tomorrow – we expect that accountability will increase for any future data breach actions, and given how inevitable data breaches are these days, it’s only a matter of time before the next one happens. Next time, though, the new GDPR will be in place, and the punishments are set to be far greater. Fines could run into the millions, and some organisation out there is going to be the first to feel the full force of them.

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