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A former Equifax executive faces insider trading charges from both federal regulators and federal prosecutors for allegedly dumping all of his vested stock options after determining that his company had suffered a massive data breach but before the information became public.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Jun Ying, 42, the former CIO of Atlanta-based Equifax U.S. Information Solutions, has been charged with committing securities fraud by engaging in illegal insider trading.

"As alleged in our complaint, Ying used confidential information to conclude that his company had suffered a massive data breach, and he dumped his stock before the news went public," Richard R. Best, director of the SEC's...

A federal judge in California has largely rejected a motion by Verizon to dismiss a class-action lawsuit brought by victims of three Yahoo data breaches. The breaches appear to have compromised every Yahoo user's personal details at least once.

In the defendant's favor, however, Judge Lucy Koh in her Friday ruling also denied several claims by the plaintiffs that Verizon had challenged, including deceit by concealment, negligence and breach of contract.

Verizon closed its acquisition of Yahoo last June for $4.48 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Yahoo agreed to shoulder half of the costs related to government investigations and third-party litigation over its breaches. Yahoo also bears full liability for any shareholder lawsuits...

Apple and Cisco say they've partnered with insurers Aon and Allianz to offer cyber insurance policies for organizations that meet best security practices and use products from the technology companies.

The "enhanced" policies may feature lower or no deductibles as an incentive. The policies may cover data breach response, a potentially expensive undertaking that can involve forensic investigators, public outreach, managing inquiries from regulators and lawsuits.

"Those create hard costs," says Emy Donavan, head of cyber at Allianz, in a video on Cisco's website. "Most companies don't have the balance sheet ability to respond to these hard costs that are incurred when companies have cyber incidents."

Cyber insurance has been around...

Does the misuse of legally obtained data constitute a data breach?

According to Facebook, the answer is no. But the social media site has found itself wading into complicated semantics over the past few days as it attempts to explain how a U.K.-based voter-profiling firm reportedly ended up with private information on 50 million of its users.

The social networking giant continues to deny that it experienced a breach, even after new information has surfaced in a long-running saga involving the digital research firm Cambridge Analytica, which helped deliver conservative-leaning election advertisements to millions of U.S. voters.

Facebook says it has banned Strategic Communication Laboratories and its data-analyzing subsidiary,...