House Commerce Committee to hold hearing on Equifax breach

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to examine the massive Equifax data breach that exposed the sensitive information of 143 million people to hackers.

“This unprecedented data breach could impact tens of millions of Americans and raises serious questions about the security of our personal information online,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the panel’s chairman, said in a statement Friday.

“After receiving an initial briefing from Equifax, I have decided to hold a hearing on the matter so that we can learn what went wrong and what we need to do to better protect consumers from serious breaches like this in the future.”

{mosads}Walden is the second House committee chairman to announce a hearing on the breach, which was revealed Thursday afternoon. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) called the news “troubling” and said he would set a date for his own panel’s hearing.

And Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) has called for the Judiciary Committee to open an investigation into the incident.

Equifax said that the breach exposed the Social Security numbers and other personal information of 143 million people, and more than 200,000 had their credit card numbers stolen.