At this point it shouldn’t surprise any of us. But this news had many of our jaws dropping! The largest telecommunications company in the United States, AT&T, released a statement revealing the discovery of a dataset for sale on the “dark web”. The dataset contained information for approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former users, totaling around 73 million affected accounts.
The released information included passcodes (PIN numbers) and Social Security numbers from 2019 or earlier, while excluding any other personal financial information or call history. However, the dataset potentially contained e-mail and mailing addresses, phone numbers, and birthdates.
AT&T has taken steps to notify all customers affected by the breach via e-mail or mail and has advised them to reset their passcodes. If you are an AT&T customer, it is crucial to exercise caution and skepticism when receiving any e-mails requesting a password change. Please make sure it is from AT&T, as it’s suspected other cybercriminals will attempt to capitalize on this issue and send out fake e-mails with malicious links, hoping someone will click on them. If you’re concerned it’s a fake e-mail, call AT&T support and ask them to send another reset link while you’re on the phone.
As for the cause of the breach, it’s still unknown whether the data breach originated from AT&T or one of its vendors, but AT&T has launched an investigation and will likely hire computer forensics specialists to find the cause of the incident.
The organization will need to remove any malware from the software that operates its customer account system without disrupting service for unaffected customers. Between the investigation, cleaning up the issues, lawsuits, legal fees and more, this will be an expensive issue to solve.
This is why at KRS IT Consulting we talk about being proactive with cybersecurity so often. While no solution is 100% impenetrable, most are strong enough to keep the majority of hackers out. It is way more costly to deal with the effects of a cyber-attack than it is to prevent one in the first place.
If you’re concerned about the safety of your organization, request a FREE Security Assessment from our team of cybersecurity experts. We’ll analyze your network so you can see if there are exposed entry points in your network that hackers could use to break in. We’ll also advise on how to work with third-party vendors to ensure your and your customers’ data is as secure as possible.
Remember. Hackers will do whatever it takes to break into your network! Your job as the CEO is to do whatever it takes to keep them out. And we are here to help you with that! Click here to book your Security Risk Assessment with one of our cybersecurity experts, or call our office at 201.402.1900.