Two weeks after international credit rating agency Equifax revealed that it had experienced a security breach between May and July this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has now disclosed that its Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system was hacked last year. The EDGAR system stores financial documents filed by publicly traded companies. According to the SEC: "In 2017, on a typical day, investors and other market participants access more than 50 million pages of disclosure documents through the EDGAR system, which receives and processes over 1.7 million electronic filings per year." In regards to the breach, this is what the SEC had to say: Notwithstanding our efforts to protect our systems and manage cybersecurity risk, in certain cases cyber threat actors have managed to access or misuse our systems. In August 2017, the Commission learned that an incident previously detected in 2016 may have provided the basis for illicit gain through trading. Specifically, a software vulnerability in the test filing component of our EDGAR system, which was patched promptly after discovery, was exploited and resulted in access to nonpublic information. We believe the intrusion did not result in unauthorized access to personally identifiable information, jeopardize the operations of the Commission, or result in systemic risk. Even though the SEC believes that there was no unauthorized access, some illegal stock trades may have been carried out. Our Division of Enforcement has investigated and filed cases against individuals who we allege placed fake SEC filings on our EDGAR…
