Not only did Smith fail in handling the situation once it was brought public, but the damage to the company isn't done yet — as the possibility of class action lawsuits looms grimly ahead, CNBC's Jim Cramer said during his daily "Mad Money" show Monday. A "legal debacle" has now turned into a "public relations catastrophe," and the stock continues to trade under heavy selling pressure despite an already notable plunge.
"What else needs to go wrong before the board will get rid of this guy?" Cramer asked. "Rather than ousting Smith, a couple of mid-level executives fell on their swords. I can tell you right now that is not enough. Richard Smith should be fired."
In the meantime, Cramer added Smith's name to his "Wall of Shame," which consists of executives whose legacy will be that of "value destroying" that don't deserve to run a public company.
Separately, Bloomberg reported that Equifax may have been aware of a major beach in its system in March which is five months before the company publicly disclosed its data breach.
One of the main justifications for the inclusion of Smith in the "Wall of Shame" is the manner in which he handled the data breach, Cramer explained. It is known that the hackers took advantage of a vulnerability in an open sourced software and Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO had identified this vulnerability two months before the data breach occurred and sent out notices. However, Equifax likely didn't pay close enough attention to Cisco's warnings, allowing the hackers to commit their crime without notice for weeks.
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