Equifax—known for huge data breach—is building a Web3 KYC solution

Published at: Oct. 27, 2022

Credit reporting company Equifax, known for suffering from one of the largest customer data breaches to date, has partnered with blockchain company Oasis Labs to build a Know Your Customer (KYC) solution.

Equifax and Oasis said on Oct. 26 that the latter would be building a decentralized identity management and KYC solution for the industry on Oasis’ platform which will leverage Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from Equifax to help with checks and user identification.

The announcement made no mention of the exact technology which will underpin this offering and Cointelegraph’s request for comment was not immediately responded to by either company.

Both firms believe there hasn’t been a KYC solution tailored to Web3 with “strong privacy protection” and their proposed offering is set to address this gap by issuing anonymized KYC credentials to individuals’ wallets.

This credential will be continuously updated according to the announcement and Oasis pledges its “privacy-preserving capabilities” will ensure data is processed in confidence whilst maintaining a trail on the company's blockchain.

Web3 firms offering similar solutions based around decentralized identity are Dock and Quadrata with each offering a product built around decentralized identity.

The partnership could have some Web3 natives concerned considering the significant data breach Equifax suffered in 2017. Around 163 million worldwide private records were compromised with 148 million being U.S. citizens making it the 13th largest data breach in U.S. history according to cybersecurity company UpGuard.

Related: Zero-knowledge KYC could solve the privacy vs compliance conundrum — VC partner

Attackers targeted a third-party web portal with a known vulnerability that was patched but Equifax had failed to update to the latest version, the hackers gained access to the firms' servers for around two and a half months all the while siphoning millions of records containing sensitive information.

It was reported that Equifax spent $1.4 billion on legal fees and strengthening its security posture following the incident. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a $700 million fine in July 2019 which the firm settled.

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