BATON ROUGE, LA (Attorney General Jeff Landry’s Office)– Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry today announced that a coalition of 50 attorneys general has reached a settlement with Equifax as the result of an investigation into a massive 2017 data breach.
The settlement is the largest data breach enforcement action in history and includes a Consumer Restitution Fund of up to $425 million, a $175 million payment to the states, and injunctive relief that contains a significant financial commitment.
“Equifax failed to maintain a reasonable security system, enabling hackers to penetrate its systems and expose the data of 56 percent of American adults,” said General Landry. “I am proud of our office’s work to get justice for Louisiana’s consumers and all Americans impacted this historic breach of consumer data.”
Following the 2017 breach that exposed social security numbers, names, dates of birth, addresses, credit card numbers, and/or driver’s license numbers – the coalition of Attorneys General launched a multi-state investigation. Landry’s office served on the Executive Committee of that investigation.
The investigation found that the breach occurred because Equifax failed to implement an adequate security program to protect consumers’ highly sensitive personal information. Despite knowing about a critical vulnerability in its software, Equifax failed to fully patch its systems. Moreover, Equifax failed to replace software that monitored the breached network for suspicious activity. As a result, the attackers penetrated Equifax’s system and went unnoticed for 76 days, Landry’s office said.
Under the terms of the settlement, Equifax agreed to provide a single Consumer Restitution Fund of up to $425 million—with $300 million dedicated to consumer redress.
If the $300 million is exhausted, the Fund can increase by up to an additional $125 million. The company will also offer affected consumers extended credit-monitoring services for a total of 10 years.
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