What You Need to Know About the Equifax Data Breach

written by Patricia Stoner MyersAs you may have already heard, Equifax, one of the three credit monitoring agencies, suffered a data breach from May through July 2017. They discovered the cybersecurity incident on July 29, 2017, and have stopped the intrusion.However, they identified a possible impact to approximately 143 million U.S. consumers. The information accessed primarily includes names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s license numbers.You should monitor your personal information. Visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website (www.ftc.gov/idtheft), for steps to better protect against identity theft. Due to this breach, Equifax has setup free credit file monitoring and ID protection products for one year. You may consider enrolling in their free service once their security issues have been resolved.Everyone should be extra vigilant about potential phishing emails. Considering this breach, the emails could include personal data, thus appearing more legitimate. We will continue to monitor and update this post with new information. Contact us if you have any questions 417-881-0145.