Moody’s has just slashed its rating outlook on Equifax, the first time cybersecurity issues have been cited as the reason for a downgrade.
Moody’s lowered Equifax’s outlook from stable to negative on Wednesday, as the credit monitoring company continues to suffer from the massive 2017 breach of consumer data.
“We are treating this with more significance because it is the first time that cyber has been a named factor in an outlook change,” Joe Mielenhausen, a spokesperson for Moody’s, told CNBC. “This is the first time the fallout from a breach has moved the needle enough to contribute to the change.”
Equifax could not immediately be reached for comment.
The decision is significant because investors increasingly look to ratings firms and insurance companies to adequately predict the longer-term fallout of some of the biggest breaches, a difficult task given the relative lack of historical data on these incidents.