Yahoo and Equifax are going to need a lot of sorry cards.<\/p>\n
Executives from the two companies testified before Congress on Wednesday, apologizing for massive network breaches that affected billions of people around the world.<\/p>\n
Yahoo last month revealed that in 2013 it suffered the largest hack in history, a breach that hit 3 billion customer accounts<\/a>. Equifax, a credit-monitoring agency, in September said hackers stole information, including Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, names and addresses, on up to\u00a0143 million Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee demanded answers on how the two companies would protect people from future massive data breaches.<\/p>\n “It’s not a question of if we’ll have another one, but when,” Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, said in his opening statement.<\/p>\n It was a packed house on Capitol Hill: Both the current and former Equifax CEOs, Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr. and Rick Smith, respectively, testified. Yahoo’s former CEO, Marissa Mayer, as well as parent company Verizon’s chief privacy officer, Karen Zacharia, also testified. Verizon bought Yahoo in June<\/a>, with the data theft shedding $350 million off the deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mayer opened her testimony with an apology, pointing out that Yahoo had been hit by a sophisticated attack from Russian hackers, one that even the best security couldn’t have stopped.<\/p>\n “These thefts occurred during my tenure, and I want to sincerely apologize to each and every one of our users,” Mayer said.<\/p>\n