02/Jul/2019
A former Equifax CIO, who sold his stock in the company after learning about its 2017 data breach several months before the public and government agencies were informed, has been sentenced to serve four months in federal prison for insider trading.
Jun Ying, 44, who worked as the CIO of Equifax U.S. Information Solutions, pleaded guilty to charges of insider trading in March. On June 27, he was sentenced to four months in federal prison, ordered to pay more than $117,000 (£93,000) in restitution and fined $55,000 (£43,000). He is the second Equifax executive to plead guilty to insider trading charges stemming from the 2017 data breach.
The 2017 Equifax breach exposed the personal information of 148 million Americans as well as data on Canadian and U.K. citizens. The incident has spawned several investigations of the company, which found that Equifax’s failure to patch a vulnerability in the Apache Struts open source web application framework allowed attackers to find their way into the network and steal personal data.
Over the last two years, the data breach has cost Atlanta-based Equifax $1.4 billion (£1.1 billion), which includes overhauling its information security program. Investigations and government reports about the incident continue.
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