The U.K.'s TalkTalk Telecom Group once again has been involved in a hacking incident leaving four million of its subscribers vulnerable. This is the second incident for the last 12 months since December 2014.
TalkTalk Telecom notified its customers that the hackers might have accessed their subscribers' information on the company's database. Although the company has acknowledged that not all information was encrypted or meaning that there would be no problem if someone had accessed such information, still there is uncertainty as to what type of information the hackers have accessed on their servers.
The telecom company does not have information on who or where the attack came from, though the company has received calls demanding for ransom from a group that claims to be behind the hacks. The Cybercrime Division of the U.K. Metropolitan Police has not made any arrests as the attack is said to be still under investigation.
This would not be the first time TalkTalk was hit by a hack attack as the company suffered from it in December 2014. Presently, this would be the latest attack in an increasingly familiar chain of hacking events ranging from companies like Home Depot, Carphone Warehouse, and Target, a retail company that was recently hacked, in March 2015.
Although the telecom's customers are not affected directly, this could all mean a rise in product cost due to hack severity and also a buildup in cyber theft insurance policies that could be very expensive. Also, hacking incidents like this can result to fraud as the telecom's subscriber identities are at risk.
Identity theft enables the hackers to use and impersonate other people or companies and use such information to fool other folks to get money or other personal information such as passwords to email addresses or even pin numbers from bank accounts or credit card information, leaving people exposed.
Due to this incident, TalkTalk asked its subscribers to monitor their accounts cautiously for any signs of fraud. Also, the company offered its subscribers free credit surveillance for one year. Now, the company is taking it more seriously than ever in securing their systems making it impenetrable as much as possible to hack attacks and taking all the necessary steps to understand, analyze what happened and what to do so it would not recur in the future.
