Equifax ousts two top tech officers

NEW YORK — Equifax announced late Friday that its chief information officer and chief security officer would leave the company immediately, after the breach of 143 million Americans’ personal information. It also presented a litany of security efforts it made after noticing suspicious network traffic in July.

The credit data company said that Susan Mauldin, who had been the top security officer, and David Webb, the chief technology officer, are retiring from Equifax. Mauldin, who studied music in college, had come under media scrutiny for her qualifications in security.

Equifax did not say in its statement what retirement packages the executives would receive.

Mauldin is being replaced by Russ Ayers, an information technology executive inside Equifax. Webb is being replaced by Mark Rohrwasser, who most recently was in charge of Equifax’s international technology operations.

Equifax has been under intense public pressure since it disclosed last week that hackers accessed or stole millions of Social Security numbers, birth dates and other information.

On Friday it gave its most detailed timeline of the breach yet, saying it noticed suspicious network traffic on July 29 associated with its U.S. online dispute portal Web application. Equifax said it believes the access occurred from May 13 through July 30.

Equifax had said earlier that it identified a weakness in a software package called Apache Struts as the technological crack that allowed hackers to access the data from the database maintained primarily for lenders. That disclosure cast the company’s security lapse in an even harsher light. The software problem was detected in March, and a recommended software patch was released shortly afterward.

Equifax said its security officials were “aware of this vulnerability at that time, and took efforts to identify and to patch any vulnerable systems in the company’s IT infrastructure.”