FTC asked to investigate Equifax breach

The Federal Trade Commission is the latest government agency being asked to investigate the recent Equifax breach after receiving a formal request Wednesday from Sen. Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat.

Mr. Warner, a member of the Banking, Budget and Finance committees and cofounder of the bipartisan Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, has asked the FTC to consider whether the credit-rating agency is adequately prepared to protect “the enormous amounts of sensitive data they collect and commercialize” in the wake of suffering a massive recently disclosed data breach affecting upwards of 143 million Americans, his office said Wednesday.

“The implications of a breach of this magnitude are sobering, as this identifying data forms the basis for consumer credit and other financial transactions,” Mr. Warner wrote in the letter. “In ways similar to the financial service industry’s systemic risk designation, I fear that firms like Equifax may illustrate a set of institutions whose activities, left unchecked, can significantly threaten the economic security of Americans.”

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