Once again, a telecom giant made it to the news owing to a security incident. Though, this time, the victim O2 UK suffered indirectly since the data breach happened to a partner firm Aerial Direct.
O2 UK Partner Data Breach
Reportedly, the UK-based telecommunication firm O2 has indirectly suffered a cyber attack. Specifically, data was breached from the O2 UK partner firm Aerial Direct potentially affecting thousands of customers.
As revealed via their website, the firm recently noticed unauthorized access to their database. Investigating the matter revealed that the incident resulted in a security breach.
The data was contained in an external back-up database, a part of which was accessed by an unauthorised third-party attacker, who downloaded some of the information contained on that database, which was confined to non-financial information.
According to TheRegister, Aerial Direct disclosed the incident in an email notification to their customers, they stated they noticed the breach on February 26, 2020. Regarding the breached details, the company revealed that the database contained personal information of customers. As stated on their website,
The information was used to manage information about our customers. This included contact details (such as name, home and email address, date of birth and phone numbers), technical and product information. Please note that whilst this is all of the types of information contained in the database, not all of this information may have related to every customer.
Nonetheless, the incident did not affect financial data or passwords since the database did not contain such information.
Security Measures Underway
Upon noticing the breach, the firm swiftly worked out to contain the attack.
As soon as we became aware of this unauthorised access we shut down all permissions to the database to contain the incident.
They also began informing customers about the breach. For other details, they are still investigating the matter.
For now, the extent of the breach remains unclear. Nonetheless, considering the extensive customerbase of the Aerial Direct, one may expect it to be huge. Aerial Direct boasts having O2 UK as the largest business partner with 130,000 customers, among other clients. They have confirmed on their website that they keep the data of expired customers for 6 years.
Recently, another telecom giant T-Mobile has also disclosed a data breach involving personal and financial information.