“As the fallout from the Equifax data breach grows, people are increasingly looking at the company’s CEO. For many, the question is not whether Richard F. Smith, who has led Equifax since 2005, will step down, but when.
The size of the breach, which affected 143 million customers, and the months it took for Equifax (EFX) to disclose it, hit hard at Smith’s ambitions to build the company into a big data “powerhouse,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. It’s also not clear when Smith found out about the breach. At an August meeting two weeks after it was discovered, he extolled the importance of data security and said protecting data was “a huge priority” for Equifax. “