Wall Street regulator needs to ‘better protect’ cyber data: inspector report

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) inspector general said in a report released Wednesday that the agency must ‘better protect’ its wide-ranging data against hacking and other cyber intrusions. 

The report, first reported by Reuters, comes on the heels of two major data breaches at Equifax and the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The inspector general warned in the report that the CFPB, which collects sensitive information on individuals, companies and financial institutions, could be susceptible to similar breaches. 

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The CFPB “has not fully implemented processes, such as data loss prevention technologies, within its internal network that would enable the agency to detect and better protect against unauthorized access to and disclosure of its sensitive information,” the report says.

Equifax, one of the country’s three credit bureaus, acknowledged last month that it had experienced a major data breach that may have exposed the personal information of more than 145 million people.

The company’s former CEO Richard Smith, who resigned from his post in the wake of the revelations, is on Capitol Hill this week testifying on the breach and the company’s response. 

At the same time, the SEC revealed last month that a 2016 breach of its system for public-company filings may have allowed hackers to profit from illicit trading. The regulator later acknowledged that the personal information, including the Social Security numbers, of two unnamed people.