Absa has suffered a data breach affecting a number of its clients, exposing their personal information to external parties.<\/p>\n
The bank sent an email to affected clients on Monday 30 November, warning them that their personal information had been shared with third parties.<\/p>\n
“We regret to notify you that Absa has identified an isolated internal data leak whereby personal information of a limited number of Absa customers was shared with parties external to the bank,” Absa told clients.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, some of your personal information formed part of this data which included your identity number, contact details, address and account numbers.”<\/p>\n
“Absa takes the protection of personal data extremely seriously and has taken proactive steps to address the potential risk to our customers,” Absa said.<\/p>\n
The bank confirmed that the following personal information was exposed to external parties:<\/p>\n
Absa did not state whether any other client information has been exposed in the breach, but said it may contact affected customers to validate potentially suspicious transactions going forward.<\/p>\n
The precise number of affected customers remains unconfirmed, but Absa has referred to it as a “small portion” of its client base.<\/p>\n
“As part of these monitoring measures, you might receive a phone call from us to validate potentially suspicious transactions to ensure heightened protection of your interest,” Absa said.<\/p>\n
“Please note that we will never ask you to share your ‘keys to the safe’ (including your online banking PIN or password or your card CVV, PIN or one-time password) with us or to approve activities to prevent fraud.”<\/p>\n
Absa said it has put measures in place to prevent and detect unauthorised debit orders on the accounts of affected clients.<\/p>\n
“Be assured that we will contact you if we detect unauthorised debit orders on your account,” Absa said.<\/p>\n
“Kindly note that we will never ask you to approve the reversal of unauthorised debit orders.”<\/p>\n
The bank said it was constantly improving its defences against cybercrime and, as a result of this incident, it has further refined its controls and protection processes.<\/p>\n
Absa told MyBroadband that the data was exposed due to the actions of an employee who acted unlawfully.<\/p>\n
“Absa advises that an employee has unlawfully made selected customer data available to a small number of external parties,” Absa said.<\/p>\n
“The leaked data relates to a small portion of Absa South Africa\u2019s customer base to date, although investigations continue.”<\/p>\n
Absa said that upon discovering the contravention, it secured High Court orders that enabled search and seizure operations at various premises and secured all devices containing the data.<\/p>\n
“The data on these devices was subsequently destroyed,” Absa said.<\/p>\n
Absa has brought criminal charges against the employee and said that the requisite consequence management has been undertaken internally.<\/p>\n
“Absa may take further action in relation to the recipients of the data once the full scope of the leak is identified and all investigations are completed,” Absa said.<\/p>\n
“Absa has put in place additional control measures to minimize the risk of reoccurrence in future.”<\/p>\n
Absa has suffered a data breach that exposed clients’ personal banking information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341028,"featured_media":268039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2186,36278,26872,35],"class_list":["post-378358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-absa","tag-customer-data","tag-data-breach","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378360,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378358\/revisions\/378360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}