How Equifax Continues to Strengthen its Cybersecurity Readiness
OCTOBER IS CYBERSECURITY AWARENESS MONTH AND EQUIFAX IS SHARING HOW THEY BUILT one of the world’s most advanced and effective cybersecurity programs over the last six years – by looking at cybersecurity as a team sport.
Equifax Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Technology Officer Jamil Farshchi recently sat down to share the similarities between corporate cybersecurity readiness and a sports team preparing for a big game. They are more alike than one might think.
“Prioritizing security and building it into our systems (vs. bolting it on) has become part of our culture and helps us perform better - it's like having home field advantage. Over the last year, we realized the key to success is collaboration so we brought Security and Technology under a shared leadership structure, making us better equipped to protect customer and consumer data,” said Farshchi. "We have also made a multi-year $1.5+ billion investment into the Equifax Cloud™, one of the largest Cloud initiatives ever undertaken in our industry and it has changed nearly every facet of our infrastructure."
When it comes to security, the Equifax Cloud is more secure than legacy systems because it provides a consistent platform. The company has worked to dramatically reduce complexity (compared to legacy systems) and the surface area for attacks, which makes automation easier and allows the cloud environment to be consistently updated to ensure Equifax products are always using the latest generation of capabilities and protection.
“Our migration to the Equifax Cloud is an example of how we are using technology to gain more robust visibility into the security of our enterprise, helping us detect and respond to threats with more speed and precision,” said Farshchi. “We’re using the Cloud, coupled with our custom data fabric, to give customers the ability to view the real-time security posture of the products and services they leverage from us — helping us protect the entire industry.”
The Equifax team approach to security has allowed the company to outperform all major industry benchmarks for the past four consecutive years, exceeding Technology and Financial Services companies analyzed in the latest Security Annual Report.
As Equifax continues its security leadership journey, the organization will share learnings and collaborate closely with customers, policymakers, and other organizations — helping shape the future of cybersecurity to better protect its own data while simultaneously moving the whole industry forward. Security can only be maintained through communication, collaboration, and transparency.
Read more about the Equifax Security team’s commitment to collaboration and how they continue to pioneer in cybersecurity.