The Senate Commerce Committee revealed on Wednesday that current and former Equifax CEOs as well as ex-Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer are to testify later this month before the Senate panel about cybersecurity breaches. According to the committee, they will answer questions concerning the data breaches that both companies were affected by.
“Massive data breaches have touched the vast majority of American consumers. When such breaches occur, urgent action is necessary to protect sensitive personal information,” the committee’s chairman John Thune said.
He added that the hearing will provide the public with a chance to hear from these individuals, who were in charge when the breaches happened or during the response efforts which followed afterwards. Thune will demand that they provide information as to whether there were steps that they could have taken to prevent these breaches.
Mayer resigned earlier this year, after Yahoo’s internet assets were acquired by Verizon. She is to provide answers to questions regarding the 2013 data breach which affected all of their accounts, as the company disclosed last month. Verizons’s chief privacy officer Karen Zacharia will also testify on November 8.
Customer’s personal information, such as names, addresses and phone numbers were accessed by hackers, although they did not steal passwords and credit card information. Yahoo and law enforcement are still trying to determine who is responsible for the attack.
The former CEO of Equifax Richard Smith will also testify at the hearing on how hackers stole the financial data of over 140 million people. Smith, who stepped down from his position following the company’s breach, has already been questioned by lawmakers from the Senate. The current CEO of the credit reporting firm Paulino Barros will also appear at the hearing, The Hill reports.
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