When the news emerged that Equifax had succumbed to a colossal data breach from mid-May through July of last year, consumers were livid—in part because the ransacking was entirely preventable. Hackers stole 148 million people’s names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, home addresses, and more sensitive information, as of the major credit bureau’s last count in March, and worse yet, it happened two months after software fixes for the vulnerabilities at fault had been made available.
In the year since, thousands of companies have continued to introduce the same security holes into their computer networks.
