Abstract

In September 2017, the world awoke to the news that Equifax, a consumer reporting agency and one of the pillars of the American credit system, fell prey to a data breach that led to the exposure of 147 million individuals’ personal information. For Equifax, the coming weeks would include high-profile executive resignations, a steep drop in its stock prices, and an infamously ill-conceived public outreach effort; however, eventually the public’s attention turned elsewhere. After all, Equifax was just the latest in a seemingly endless parade of data breach victims that included commercial titans like Target and eBay, political campaigns like Hillary Clinton’s, and government agencies like the Office of Personnel Management. Today, the threat of the next data breach looms invisibly over every aspect of society.