Capital One Financial Corp announced Monday that the FBI has arrested an alleged hacker who reportedly accessed the personal information of as many as six million people in Canada and 100 million people in the United States.
The information exposed in the hack was largely linked to consumers and small businesses that applied for Capital One credit card products between 2005 and early 2019, the company said in a news release.
Also exposed were customer status data, such as credit limits, scores, balances and payment histories.
In June, Desjardins Group revealed a data breach that saw the leak of names, addresses, birthdates, social insurance numbers and other private information from roughly 2.7 million people and 173,000 businesses.
Back in 2017, a data breach at Equifax, one of the major credit reporting companies, exposed the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of roughly half of the U.S. population and about 19,000 Canadians. Last week, Equifax agreed to pay at least $700 million to settle lawsuits over the breach in a settlement with federal authorities and states. The agreement includes up to $425 million in monetary relief to consumers.
Unfortunately, security breaches make news headlines far too often. It’s time to have a serious discussion about how you’re going to keep your customers’ personal information secure and prevent a costly security breach.
Let’s get a plan in place today.