Wonga, the British payday loan company, has fallen victim to a data breach affecting an estimated 270,000 customers. The stolen data includes names, addresses, phone numbers and bank account details – including the last four digits of customers’ bank cards.
Shortly after the breach was discovered, Wonga began contacting customers and setup a dedicated help page and phone line to deal with inquiries.
The firm said it was “urgently investigating illegal and unauthorised access to the personal data of some of its customers”.
The firm is advising customers to inform their banks about the breach, and to watch out for any unusual activity.
Wonga’s has been previously criticised by experts about the apparent weakness of their data protection strategy.
A cybersecurity expert from the University of Surrey has claimed that it looks like “one of the biggest” data breaches involving financial information in the UK.
Wonga has claimed that the attackers didn’t gain access to user accounts, but warned customers to be on the lookout for suspicious activity.
It is clear that such data breaches are on the rise, and many organisations are still not taking the necessary steps in preventing such breaches from occurring. One of the most important steps organisations should take is to ensure that they are able to make a timely assessment of who is doing what, where, and when. We at Lepide, offer an advanced suite of auditing, reporting and alerting that can help organizations keep track of important system changes, permissions and file based events across their network.