CYBERSECURITY INCIDENT HANDLING: A CASE STUDY OF THE EQUIFAX DATA BREACH.

Public communication strategies are an important component of corporate cybersecurity incident handling and crisis management. This paper studies the recent Equifax data breach using an improved version of business communication model for cybersecurity incident handling, which highlights and examines the scapegoating strategy often used in corporate crisis management. This study uses Equifax public release documents for text data analysis and evaluates the effectiveness of Equifax incident handling strategies for the massive data breach. The paper also discusses implications for cybersecurity education and workforce preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]