The Bank Of Montreal claimed on Monday it was contacted by cyber criminals who claimed that they were in possession of financial and personal information of a number of the bank’s customers.
The bank said that they believe this cyber-attack has been carried out from outside the country and that they are confident that the vulnerability in the system that led to such information falling in the wrong hands has been mitigated.
The Bank of Montreal is said to have been working with authorities to find the cause of the issue. Bank of Montreal is also Canada’s fourth biggest money lender. They have still not disclosed how many customers have been affected by this attack or if the customers have lost money.
The banks also refused to respond to any request for further comment. The bank, however, contacted the customers who may have been a target of this hack and have claimed that they would “support and stand by them.”
They also added in a statement saying, “Customers are recommended to monitor their accounts and notify BMO with any suspicious activity.”
Six of the biggest banks of Canada have been working along with Bank of Canada in order to improve their defense mechanism against cyber attacks. The Bank of Canada claimed earlier this month that some of the attacks may unavoidably succeed; however, it has the recovery process in place to make sure that the damage is kept to a minimum.
Cyber attacks have become increasingly common, statistics from Equifax reveal that around 146.6 million names, 146.6 million dates of birth, around 145 million US security numbers and 209,000 payment card numbers and expiration dates have been fraudulently obtained due to cyber attacks.
