Equifax's CEO is stepping down.
Chief Executive Officer Richard Smith announced his resignation in a statement to investors.
Equifax is currently under fire over a massive data breach affecting up to 143 million Americans.
And its repeated mishandling of the incident's aftermath.
Smith said, quote, the cybersecurity incident has affected millions of consumers and I have been completely dedicated to making this right.
I believe it is in the best interest of the company to have new leadership to move the company forward, unquote.
Smith's resignation is effective immediately with the company tapping interim CEO Paulino do Rego Barros Jr.
to help navigate its immediate future which already includes multiple investigations and lawsuits.
Equifax has been heavily criticized over its actions regarding the data breach, including admitting it did not patch a security flaw that allowed hackers to infiltrate its servers.
Waiting a month to alert consumers after discovering the hack raising questions surrounding legal wording in its hack checker and tweeting a link that sent breach victims to a spoof site instead of the official one.
The company also announced plans to create a special committee to handle this breach and any other cyber security incidence that may happen in the future.
For cnet.com I'm Ashley Esceba.
