In the ongoing series of events, it is nothing new that your data is at risk due to some data breach. This time it is one of the banking services that had a data breach potentially affecting 1.7 million clients. As big as the number seems it is a huge issue that companies with such a large number of clients are failing against data breaches. This time it is Nedbank that had a data breach leaving a large number of clients vulnerable to attackers. Reports say that no accounts of clients or the system were compromised but this data breach was confirmed by Nedbank.
As per the investigation by Nedbank, this security issue happened at Computer Facilities a third party service provider. This service provider is a messaging company issuing SMS and emails to different companies including Nedbank. The breach was confirmed and data compromised from the Computer Facilities included personal information. Client details such as names, Phone numbers, email addresses, physical address, ID numbers, etc were compromised in this data breach. Nedbank claims that its systems are completely secure and are at no risk after the breach at Computer Facilities. This security issue was discovered through regular routine monitoring by Nedbank.
The data breach did affect 1.7 billion clients but none of the bank accounts were compromised. The third-party service provider was not linked to the server or system of Nedbank. Due to the isolation system at Nedbank didn’t get affected but still, the Computer Facilities is taken offline now until Nedbank says anything. Personal data that was taken in this attack is not confidential or of high risk to clients but it makes them vulnerable. With email, phone number and addresses it is easy to target clients with fraud and phishing.