The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to say Tuesday that his agency may have mishandled a breach of its system for disclosing market-moving news and promise to intensify how it defends itself against hackers, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Facing his first crisis as the SEC’s chairman, Jay Clayton suggested in testimony prepared for a Senate hearing today that not enough was done under his predecessor, former chairman Mary Jo White, to size up a 2016 breach that might have provided the basis for insider trading. The SEC’s handling of the hack — which was disclosed in an unusual and lengthy evening statement last Wednesday — is likely to generate tough questions from senators who already face distress calls from constituents over the hacker attack on Equifax Inc., from which intruders ransacked vast troves of personal information, including social security numbers.
