Only the Introduction to Final Project-1.docx - FINAL...

FINAL PROJECT 1
Final Project
Spencer Child
Arizona State University
IFT 598: Human Factors in Cyber Security
Dr. Calvin Nobles
October 8, 2022

FINAL PROJECT 2
Introduction
Equifax, a United States-based credit reporting agency, was targeted by a group of
attackers in March 2017, leading to one of the largest data breaches in U.S. corporate history.
The initial vulnerability was ignored at the time of its publication, allowing for the attack to take
place. Although the vulnerability was patched and the incident disclosed to the public after some
time, these did not prevent the outcome of the involuntarily-collected private data of millions of
United States citizens from being made accessible to the public. The events of this incident serve
as one of many reminders of the importance of properly-secured network and data storage
systems, of the hesitancy by large companies to report their legal failures caused by selfish
desires, and of human behavior and how they impact the security culture of an organization.
The Equifax breach of 2017 occurred while the cybersecurity industry was still
understanding the idea of and working to implement incident response to a degree beyond the
concept of reacting to an already-occured incident. Angela Messer and Brad Medairy (2018, p.