Oklahoma Securities Commission administrator to retire

The longtime administrator of the Oklahoma Securities Commission is retiring from his post, effective Aug. 1.

Irving Faught’s departure comes after the Securities Department faced a massive data breach late last year, but the two incidents are not related, said commission Chairman David Aboud.

“I know that the timing certainly looks that way, but no. Irving put in 30 years,” Aboud said.

Faught did not resign and he was not fired, he simply decided to retire after a long tenure with the commission, Aboud said. A former securities attorney with an Oklahoma City firm, Faught started as the administrator of the Securities Commission in 1991 at age 51.

A cybersecurity research team discovered in December millions of files, including Social Security numbers and health data, unsecured and open to the public on a server belonging to the Securities Department.

Private cybersecurity firm UpGuard, which monitors the web for public data exposures, notified the Securities Department of the breach and eventually published its findings.

The server error exposed sensitive information about at least 100,000 finance brokers going back to 1986, according to UpGuard. The three terabytes of data included emails, Social Security numbers, health information and details about FBI investigations involving financial institutions.

The Securities Department immediately removed public access to the server after being notified by UpGuard. The private data was only exposed for about a week, but at the time, it was not clear if anyone had accessed the information.

The five-member commission that oversees the Securities Department will be tasked with seeking out and hiring a new administrator, and that’s something the commission will have to figure out in the coming months, Aboud said. The department regulates all financial securities business occurring in Oklahoma.