Equifax Hires Former Home Depot Security Chief Jamil Farshchi as CISO

Credit reporting agency Equifax announced on Monday that it has named Jamil Farshchi as its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). 

Farshchi replaces Equifax Chief Security Officer Susan Mauldin, who abruptly retired from the company after a massive data breach was disclosed in late 2017.  

Farshchi previously served as CISO at The Home Depot, where he was hired in March 2015 after Home Depot suffered a massive data breach. Before Farshchi took the reigns as CISO at the home improvemt company, cybercriminals managed to steal email addresses and payment card data belonging to more than 56 million Home Depot customers in 2014.

According to Equifax, Farshchi will be based in Atlanta and assume “company-wide leadership of work already underway to transform the company’s information security program, and collaborate with the industry to share best practices on information security.”

He will report to the Chief Executive Officer, the company said.

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“Jamil has a reputation for helping enterprises rebuild and fortify information security programs,” Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr., interim Chief Executive Officer at Equifax, said in a statement. “His expertise in risk intelligence and cybersecurity combined with his intimate knowledge of industry best practices will allow us to design and deploy a best-in-class, global security strategy to re-establish ourselves as a trusted leader.”

Prior to his role at The Home Depot, Farshchi was the first Global CISO at Time Warner. Before that, he was the Vice President of Global Information Security at Visa. Farshchi has also held senior roles at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sitel Corporation, Nextwave Broadband, and NASA.

 He holds a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Oklahoma.  

“Equifax is a company with tremendous potential, and I am confident that we will transform our security program into one of the most advanced and recognized globally,” said Farshchi. “I am grateful for this new challenge and am looking forward to enabling the business with new insights, a fresh perspective, and a multi-dimensional way of thinking about global data stewardship and information security.”

In September 2017, Equifax revealed that hackers had accessed its systems between mid-May and late July 2017. The company eventually said the breach affected roughly 145 million customers – mostly in the U.S., but also in Canada and the United Kingdom – including their social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, and in some cases driver’s license numbers, payment cards, and dispute documents.

Documents provided recently by Equifax to senators revealed that the breach suffered by the company last year may have involved types of data not mentioned in the initial disclosure of the incident.