October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month and is a rather dismal start. Following the violation Experian announcement yesterday that affected 15 million customers of T-Mobile, today retail brokerage Scottrade announced that it had discovered a breach in one of its systems. In a statement on its website, Scottrade said he was informed of the hack by federal investigators who are investigating cybercrimes involving theft of information of Scottrade and several other financial services companies. The system accessed by hackers contained data of about 4.6 million customers , and the violation is thought to have lasted from late 2013 to early 2014.
What information to risk?
Scottrade said the system that has been violated contained customer information, including contact information (such as names, email addresses and addresses) and Social Security numbers . However, the company insists that the focal point of the attack was the contact information of the people - not their social security numbers. In addition, Scottrade customers passwords remain encrypted and there is no indication that there was fraudulent activity on trading platforms or Scottrade risk for fund clients.
It is possible that this information was stolen in an attempt to commit fraud action, according to information obtained by cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs. Guests at Scottrade should be on the lookout for potential spam emails in the coming weeks.
What Scottrade is to help customers?
On its end, Scottrade got the point of intrusion and hired additional IT security to help strengthen the protection of his system. The service will contact all past and present customers whose information was in the database accessible. If you had an account with Scottrade before February 2014, chances are you will be notified. As a precaution, Scottrade partnership with AllClear ID to provide those affected by free year of service protection against identity theft. You can find more information about it by visiting the Web site of Scottrade or by calling the hotline AllClear special ID, which is on the Web site of Scottrade, set up specifically for Scottrade customers. The hotline is available 8:00 to 8:00 p.m. CT Monday through Saturday.
Note that AllClear ID, then a popular choice for companies like Scottrade to provide protection offered to customers in the event of a data breach, does not offer the best protection a consumer could to have. Specifically, it lacks two essential features that make one of these effective services: monitoring the black market and access to your triple-bureau reports and credit scores. Learn more about how AllClear measures up reading this blog ID.
You can learn more about protecting yourself in case you are the victim of a data breach, as many of us have been in recent years, according to our data breach blog . Want to know how AllClear ID compared to other services of the identity protection against theft? Visit our table compare to a side-by-side evaluation.