How Equifax Built an Elite Cybersecurity Function

Equifax Chief Information Security Officer Jamil Farshchi recently released his list of the top risks in cybersecurity, putting a spotlight on the priorities that every organization will have to tackle in 2022.

The reality is that today’s cyber challenges are unprecedented. Attacks on companies, governments, and individuals, are more prevalent, more complex, and more impactful than ever. Anyone and everyone is a target, and the stakes have never been higher. 

That’s exactly why Equifax has invested over $1.5 billion to rebuild our security and technology systems, from the ground up. So, while today’s cyber challenges are unprecedented, Equifax is ready. Here’s how:

• Our new cloud environment has given us real-time visibility into our cloud infrastructure, rock-solid defensive capabilities, and top-tier detection and response… all to a degree that’s never before been possible.
• We hired more than 600 highly-skilled cybersecurity professionals, many of whom come from the top firms and government agencies around the world.
• We built a multi-million dollar Fusion Center, a state of the art facility that allows us to respond to threats with speed and precision.
• We launched a continuous employee security training program – including monthly phishing simulations – so that our 13,000 employees are skilled at spotting cyber threats.
• We implemented a rigorous crisis preparedness program, conducting tabletop exercises and real-time simulations to test our resiliency against a range of scenarios. 
• We changed our organizational structure by elevating security to report directly to our CEO, underscoring that cybersecurity is a business imperative for our company.

Here’s the bottom line: There’s little if any aspect of our security program that hasn’t been completely overhauled since 2017, and the results speak volumes: In multiple independent ratings, our security capabilities now exceed every major industry benchmark.

Interested in learning more? Check out this report which dives deeper into how we’ve transformed security at Equifax.