The Australian arm of credit analytics firm Equifax has sought to distance itself from a major cyber security crisis engulfing its US parent, which could see the personal data of tens of millions of people compromised.
“Please be assured that we have found no evidence that personal information of consumers in Australia or New Zealand has been affected by the US cybersecurity incident,” Equifax Australia tweeted at the weekend.
Equifax has credit information on 20 million individuals and 5.7 million commercial entities in Australia and New Zealand. It conducts credit checks on behalf of major banks, telcos and utilities.
Equifax’s US parent was thrust into the spotlight on Friday when it revealed hackers had gained access to some of its systems, potentially compromising personal information such as names, addresses, social security numbers and birth dates for almost 143 million US consumers. That figure represents about 55 per cent of Americans aged 18 or older.
Source: The Australian
