In a statement released by
the largest telecommunications company in the United States, AT&T, they
shared that they recently discovered a dataset for sale on the "dark web" that
contained information for about 7.6 million current AT&T account holders
and 65.4 million former users, totaling approximately 73 million affected
accounts.
AT&T
shared that the data released contained passcodes (PIN numbers) and Social Security
numbers from 2019 or earlier and did not contain any other personal financial
information or call history but could possibly include e-mail and mailing
addresses, phone numbers and birthdates.
AT&T
has reached out to all customers via e-mail or mail to let them know of the
breach and to reset their passcodes. If you're an AT&T customer, it's
important to be highly critical of any e-mail asking you to change your
password. 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 also have to scrub any installed malware out of the software
that runs its customer account system without disrupting unaffected customers'
service. Between the investigation, cleaning up the issues, lawsuits, legal
fees and more, this will be an expensive issue to solve.
That's
why at [Company Name],
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.
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. We are here to help! Click here to book your Security Risk Assessment with one of our cybersecurity experts, or call our office at 877.468.1230.
